Technology, Natural Disaster | featured news

On April 10, 2011, tornadoes ripped across Wisconsin, tearing roofs off houses, toppling trees and snapping power lines. In many places, the high winds were greeted with silence as some Cold War-era warning sirens failed because of lost power and other issues — just when they were needed the most.

With only sporadic access to text messaging and the Web, many in Hurricane Sandy's no-power zone quickly cobbled together systems for passing along information and arranging when and where to meet.

Electrons work for free, except, of course in major storms -- as several prominent websites discovered... Lost sites beginning [Monday] night included the Huffington Post, Gawker and the blog Mediaite. Huffington Post was back by Tuesday morning, but the site was a bit skimpier. According to a statement posted on a website of the more traditional kind, CBS News, the problem seemed to be flooding.

A new study has found that YouTube is emerging as a major platform for news, one to which viewers increasingly turn for eyewitness videos in times of major events and natural disasters....

Activists helping the flood-ravaged city of Krymsk represent a jarring contrast to the secretive approach to disaster response that long prevailed during the Soviet period.