Over the past few weeks we have received quite a few emails from readers telling us how they enjoyed the Mystery Minute series. That has been quite a surprise for me, especially considering that it is quite a bit different from what we usually do here. The whole purpose of the MM is to just have a little fun and put some variety into the website. Hopefully it will make your visit to Firegeezer just a little more enjoyable.
As you have noticed, Stephen King we’re not. Perhaps that’s why we’re not “selling” a million copies of every episode. But we plan on plugging along looking for the odd twists that sometimes drop into the lives of the fire/ems people. As I posted last week, MM will return shortly after the first of the new year and we’ll see what new mystery pops up. Thanks again for your support.
* * * * *
Once again the “new media” led the way in getting news and information out from an ongoing emergency. We’ve mentioned this a few times before, first with FossilMedic gathering the news about the Mumbai massacre. That was the big one that really set the pace for the “citizen reporters” to get the word out. Within the past year we saw this again at a plane crash in Amsterdam and the amazing airplane rescue in the Hudson River. Both of those last two relied heavily on Twitter and TwitPix to serve as information conduits.
But on Saturday it was online forums and social networking sites like ICQ that spontaneously mushroomed into news outlets as the Perm, Russia, nightclub was burning and piling up the casualties. An interesting website called Global Voices Online has published a summary of early postings by eyewitnesses who reported on what they were seeing happening. Those of us who live in the western world don’t catch onto news that’s published in the Cyrillic alphabet, so that probably explains why we were relatively late learning about the tragedy.
Global Voices has translated some of those early, spontaneous forum postings and you may find them interesting. What I find interesting is the total absence of these observations from the traditional “mainstream” coverage of the fire. Still another example of why more and more people are using the internet for their primary news and information source. Here are a selected few of the Perm postings from the other night by a variety of correspondents:
“Khromaya Loshad” is burning.
Apparently, there are some people inside. People outside run around without warm clothes, shout some names and constantly call someone on their mobile phones.Dozens of bodies lie on the road. Rescuers walk among them trying to pick the ones who are not that hopeless. Occasionally, they drag someone to ambulances. They surrounded the perimeter. They evacuate bodies.
My role was to flip victims over on their sides and bend their knees. I don’t know why but it is what the only doctor at that time told us to do. There are only 50 percent of people alive. I determined that by their eye pupils… I used a flashlight. I did it so the police could help only those who are still alive.
I just talked to my friend. He was there with his company. Thank God they are alive. He says that there was no explosion and everything started burning because of fireworks. Many people were isolated from the exit and suffocated.
The ceiling started burning because of the fireworks. I was inside. I am one of the club staff. It wasn’t a terrorist attack. A lot of dead bodies… Around 7o…
In this incident the major news source was a local forum based in Perm used primarily by Perm residents to share information. The forum – teron.ru – was the place where victims’ names were first posted. In refined jounalistic standards, that’s a dubious source, but there it is. I can immediately think of some established print newspapers in both the U. S. and Great Britain that are just as questionable on their stories. Welcome to the New Media.
Update: It was announced an hour ago that the death toll in the nightclub fire has just risen to 124. With 111 people still in critical condition, it is expected that the count will continue to rise.
Now let’s get the equipment checked out. Some routines never change. I’ll get the coffee started.
Recent Comments