Emergency Updates: Jefferson County Sheriff's Office: #LimeGulchFire Social Media Data and Analysis

On 6/19/13 the Jefferson County Type III Incident Management Team (IMT) Public Information unit was activated to support the Lime Gulch Fire response. The Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office (JCSO) responded quickly by using twitter and facebook to broadcast information about the fire and evacuations. Shortly thereafter the Jefferson County Emergency Blog was activated and an interactive google map was created.

The first tweet went out at approximately 1:28 PM on 6/19/13. By the evening of the 19^th the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office had posted 106 tweets reaching a combined impressions number of 4,029,775. 15 facebook posts had also been issued reaching a collective 60,148 impressions. The Emergency Blog had been updated 9 times. Pageviews to the blog, on the 19^th alone, reached 19,475.

The final blog post was titled: “Final Update: Type 2 Team to take Control of the Lime Gulch Fire”. This was posted at 7:20 PM on the 19^th. After this blog post was published the Jefferson County Type III IMT PIO unit was demobilized. From this point forward the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office supported and amplified the public information messages that were subsequently shared by the United States Forest Service (USFS) and the incoming Rocky Mountain Team B Type II Incident Management Team.

Through the duration of the incident the JCSO tracked various social media and pageview data related to the JCSO accounts (twitter, facebook, blogger, and google map). JCSO also tracked the following hashtags on twitter: #COFIRE, #ChairRockFire, and #LimeGulchFire. This report contains a number of archival and analytical reports produced as a result of the tracking that was completed. JCSO did not track data for the USFS twitter pages or for Inciweb.

The Jefferson County Sheriff's Office is releasing the social media reports and analysis with the US Forest Service and with the general public. The Jefferson County Sheriff's Office recognizes that the SMEM (Social Media for Emergency Management) and VOST (Virtual Operations Support Team) community continues to be an evolving movement. We are releasing our data so that the community as a whole can emulate the positives demonstrated during this incident and learn from the lessons learned during the same.

For more information regarding this report please contact the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office via the Public Information Unit. If there is additional data or documentation that you think should be a part of this report please contact us at jeffcosheriff@gmail.com. Thank you.

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Saturday, July 6, 2013

#LimeGulchFire Social Media Data and Analysis