Utilities to Tweet if hurricane hits - Local / Metro - The State

Utilities to Tweet if hurricane hits - Local / Metro - The State

If a hurricane hits South Carolina this summer, some utilities will use Twitter to update customers about power outages and safety messages.

Twitter?



For those who are a bit behind the high-tech curve, Twitter is a free online social networking service that posts brief text messages on the author’s profile page and sends them to other subscribers, called “followers.”



But in the event of a severe storm or some other catastrophic event, utility officials said, Twitter could be a valuable tool to pass along storm information, in addition to posting reports on their Web sites and issuing news releases to traditional media channels, such as newspapers and local TV stations.

“Quite honestly, I think it’s very appealing to us,” said Michelle Pearson of Charlotte-based Duke Energy, which serves 600,000 customers in South Carolina.

“If the power goes out, and their cell phone is still charged up, Twitter gives us the opportunity to share information with customers,” Pearson added.

Cell phones could be a vital communication link if a storm causes widespread power outages, darkens TV stations, and disrupts land-line telephone service, the utilities added.

A check with other power companies found that Progress Energy and state-operated Santee Cooper plan to incorporate Twitter into their public communications arsenal if a hurricane impacts their S.C. service areas.

Florida-based Progress serves about 200,000 customers in the Pee Dee region, while Santee Cooper has 155,000 customers in three coastal counties, and provides juice for 625,000 more customers of the state’s 20 electric cooperatives.

South Carolina Electric & Gas Co., which powers 652,000 homes and businesses, is studying the possibility of using Twitter, a spokesman said.

While growing in popularity, Twitter can’t be relied on solely to inform the public. For one thing, the messages, which can be no more than 140 characters, have to be brief, said Sean Sutton of Progress Energy.

So the Twitter messages, known as “tweets,” may be a sentence or two about a power outage, safety tip, or a reminder to check the outage map posted on the utility’s Web site, Sutton said.

“Twitter is not a replacement for our very sophisticated customer call-in system,” said Sutton, a member of the utility’s social media team. “But Twitter is unique because it gives us the ability to send mass messages to a large number of people through their cell phones.”

Conceived as a place where people could keep in touch with friends in cyberspace, Twitter was founded in 2006 and has about 8 million users nationwide.

With the 2009 hurricane season under way, officials predict Twitter’s role in emergency communications will expand.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has started a “Tip of the Week” for Twitter followers, reports Homeland Security Today, a business magazine. The CDC has about 1,600 subscribers to the Twitter service.

A check with coastal counties also found that the use of Twitter is being explored.

“Twitter seems to make sense because of its immediacy, but we’re looking at all social media,” Charleston County spokeswoman Danica Goff said.

In addition to choosing a format for getting the message out, Charleston officials have to determine who will be in charge of that effort.

The job would entail more than sending out information. Someone needs to monitor Twitter to track rumors and misinformation that can show up on such sites, Goff said.

Beaufort County officials said they’re looking into the possibility of using Twitter, while Horry County plans to rely on its Web site to get information out quickly to the public, said spokeswoman Lisa Bourcier.

Twitter, though, already has a track record for use in emergencies.

For example, the American Red Cross has used Twitter to announce shelter openings and closings, as well as solicit donations.

During the past winter, Duke used Twitter on three occasions to alert customers about outages due to snow and ice storms in the Midwest and Carolinas, Pearson said.

In several instances, followers who received Duke’s messages resent the “tweets” to their network of friends, Pearson said.

While their number of “followers” right now totals fewer than 1,000, the utilities are enthusiastic about using Twitter to stay in touch with the public.

“We think that Twitter is going be a very real-time and cost-effective way to get out information to our customers,” said Laura Varn of Santee Cooper.

Staff writer Joey Holleman contributed to this report. Reach Crumbo at (803) 771-8503.