#HurricaneMatthew is Now Live
How Facebook Live Transformed the Hurricane Experience
Hurricanes bring a different kind of darkness.
While the rain crashes down and the wind slowly bends trees to its will, boarded up windows, downed power lines and dark clouds form an impenetrable sheet against the sun.
Huddled up in a small closet with your family and two dogs, you hope for safety. Listening to the whistling of the wind, you await the dreaded sound of an oncoming train — the song of tornadoes.
You wonder, how long will it last? Will a tree fall on the house? Will we make it through the night?
When Hurricane Charley hit in 2004, without power to check the TV, our only sources for information were a little FM/AM radio and my sister’s at-the-time boyfriend as he sent the occasional T9-text from his dorm room about 100 miles away.
During the hurricane, the darkness was two-fold, caused both by lack of light and information. We were dependent on radio, TV and landline phones — and the latter two were often knocked out by the winds.
Before Hurricane Matthew, the last time Florida faced a major hurricane was 2005.
That was a year before Twitter launched, when Facebook was only for college students and the iPhone was still two years away.
Hurricane Matthew was different.
Though I don’t live in Florida anymore, as Hurricane Matthew moved north, a large majority of the people I care most about — my parents, sister, best friends and more — were right in the middle of his destructive path. Matthew threatened to be the strongest storm ever to make landfall along the upper Atlantic Coast of Florida.
Instead of tuning into broadcasts on my television set, I turned to Facebook’s newest tool — Facebook Live — for localized updates, and I wasn’t the only one.
Facebook Live allowed for hyper-localized, live and direct coverage that hadn’t been seen before.
News stations live-streamed from the streets, local governments broadcast tips for staying safe, Florida Storms went live in the middle of the night to answer questions and people shared what was going on outside their windows in real time.
For those in the storm, as long as they had cell phone signal, they were able to tune into find out when they could expect the worst.
As I lay awake that Thursday night, anxious about what was going to happen to my family, I was able not only to learn the status of the storm and see the live storm tracker, but actually ask meteorologist Jeff Huffman and reporter Randy Wright what exactly was going on back home.
Facebook Live was how I learned my parents in Daytona Beach would face the worst of it around 10 a.m. on Friday, which was when the eye would be parallel to the coast. Despite knowing the worst was yet to come, having this information was oddly comforting, and I was able to relay it to my parents so they could prepare. Compare this to the old days of waiting and hoping that the radio or TV announcer would name your little town or a city close by.
Considering Facebook Live is still in its relative infancy, it’s exciting to see how this new technology has been adapted for use in disaster reporting and outreach.
While Hurricanes will always bring uncertainty, it helps to know that Facebook Live will bring a little light into the darkness.
