WBTV 3 News, Weather, Sports, and Traffic for Charlotte, NC-Charlotte Fire Department using social networking to help save lives

Charlotte Fire Department using social networking to help save lives

CHARLOTTE, NC (WBTV) - The Charlotte experienced some of the worst flooding of the year this week and firefighters were able to respond online and in real-time with the assistance of the Twitter website.

They Charlotte Fire Department (CFD) is hoping to use this social networking website to save lives.

During several water rescues, word got out on twitter in real time.

"Last night, we pushed out over 20 tweets as you would call them during the height of the storm," according to CFD Captain Marc Basnight.    

Dispatchers were on one end taking calls, but there was another set of eyes and ears keeping track of the situation, too.

Monitoring stations in rising creeks tipped off staff in Mecklenburg County's Storm Water office.

Tim Troutman saw the creek levels rise.

"As the data came in and the rainfall was collected, the system sent out notifications to emergency responders around 5 pm," Troutman said.

Jeff Williams, a dispatcher for the Charlotte Fire Department, answered the storm water alerts.

Dispatchers knew Briar Creek would be a problem and they tapped into the police department's mounted traffic cameras to help monitor conditions.  Williams said he was grateful for a heads up from the county's storm water office.

"We do have enough time to get ahead, it just depends on how fast the water is rising," he said.

Using social networking could help save lives according to the first responders we interviewed.

"We learned it's a very useful [and] practical to be able to efficiently and effectively push out information," Basnight said.

You can follow the Charlotte Fire Department's tweets, by clicking on the CharlotteFD Twitter account.  You can also follow WBTV on Twitter as well, by clicking here.