Since Hurricane Katrina, people have known that the big organizations just aren’t that great at responding to natural disasters quickly. There has been a gap between when the disaster strikes and when help gets to the victims. It’s not all their fault, the bigger an organization gets, the more levels of bureaucracy have to be navigated for any true action to happen. Social Media is beginning to and will continue to change all that. From case management and damage assessment to locating victims to fundraising, social media has been one of the only thing able to fill the gap.

The one thing that hasn’t changed is that preparedness is still the key to an effective disaster response and communities that plan to integrate social media into their response will have a vast advantage.