The Social
Wildfire
Wildfires are A HUGE THREAT
ON AVERAGE 1.2 MILLION ACRES
OF WOODLAND
BURN
EVERY YEAR
WILDFIRES BACKGROUND
Wildfires could have catastrophic potential to environment, people, economy, and wildlife. Based on the data provided by Kimberly Amadeo (2019) in her article Wildfire Facts, Their Damage, and Effect on the Economy, the frequency of wildfires burned in western United States has increased by 400%, compared to 1970. California which locates in the west experiences the worst damage. Wildfire seasons in California now is year-round. Since 2012, wildfires burn in California every month (Amadeo, 2019). Wildfires have become serious disasters in California. Lessening consequences and fatalities during wildfires is necessary.
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Government benefits from social media strategies these days. Paul Hayes and Stephen Kelly (2018) mentioned in their recent articles Distributed morality, privacy, and social media in natural disaster response that the advent of social media strategies allow government to receive real time information updates and assist decision makers to respond the crises. Moreover, social network can help with evacuation declared by government during wildfires. However, the problem is the real time posts created by people may contain irrelevant or even fake information, which make the information collection process during wildfires hard and time consuming.
Work Cited
Amadeo, K. (2019, July 07). Wildfire Facts, Their Damage, and Effect on the Economy. Retrieved July 9, 2019, from https://www.thebalance.com/wildfires-economic-impact-4160764
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Hayes, P., & Kelly, S. (2018, May 24). Distributed morality, privacy, and social media in natural disaster response. Retrieved July 10, 2019, from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160791X17302932
THE BURNING TRUTH
In 2018
90%
OF ALL WILDFIRES ARE STARTED BY HUMANS
30%
LARGER FIRES IN 2018
ONLY 7%
OF FIRES CONTAINED AFTER THE FIRST WEEK OF BURNING
According to the data collected by Kimberly Amadeo (2019), 8.8 million acres were burned and 85 people were killed by the wildfires in California in 2018. It was a catastrophic disaster, which led to a huge loss of environment and also threatened people’s safety. Numerous videos and posts about California wildfires were spread on social media platforms in the time of crisis. The users created hashtags such as #cafire, #wildfires, and #CALfire for it on Twitter and Instagram. The CAL FIRE official Facebook page and public group called California Wildfire uploaded the latest information about the disaster.
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