Photo via Jim Neill on Facebook. Click for more.
Update, Dec. 28, 12:20 p.m. The Boston Globe has the fire count at 18 by now, with a father and son dead. The Ward Three Neighborhood Assoc. will be having a meeting at 7 p.m. this Tuesday. MassLive has created a topic page to catch all of their coverage. Aid efforts remain the best organized on Facebook.
Update 6:55 p.m.: The Republican is reporting that the fire count is at least a dozen, and all of them are currently considered “suspicious,” though it has not been confirmed that they’re related. Massachusetts State Fire Marshal Stephen D. Coan is offering up to a $5,000 reward for anyone who can aid in the identification of the suspected arsonists. If you have information, call 1-800-682-9229.
Some awful news is coming out of Northampton, Mass., a town just down the road from my house in Amherst, with almost a dozen fires breaking out at homes across the city in the past 24 hours. Officials suspect arson, and so far two people are reported dead.
Local television stations and newspapers did a good job covering the initial story, but I’ve been getting a lot of the developments via Facebook and Twitter – a mix of Gazette and Springfield Republican stories, ABC40 videos and content from Northampton citizens uploaded on Facebook, Flickr and Google Maps, among others.
By the time I read the news this morning, a Facebook group was created to serve as both a news hub and a planning space for the response, with over 600 members posting a constant stream of links to various media outlets – from MassLive.com to personal blogs – as well as offers of aid to the victims.
Meanwhile, on Twitter, someone set up an account for support of the victims, @01060support, and the hashtag #northamptonfires provides micro-updates as they’re available:
Greg Saulmon, assistant managing editor for online content at The Republican, has been staying on top of the developments all day, recently putting up a post about the Facebook page for MassLive.com readers who may not have seen it, and another post linking out to a very elaborate Google Map of fires created by Rosemary McNaughton of Northampton.
But as good a journalist as Greg is, no one person can keep up with the stream of information coming out of this tragic incident. In fact, I just found this post from a Boston Herald reporter, asking the people on the board to contact her:
Hyperlocal site Northampton Media is perhaps the best organized place for information on the fires, with ongoing posts – including recent press conference coverage – from Mary Serreze, as well as feeds from the major media outlets and links to the map and other citizen-generated information pertaining to the fire.
Local blogger Jim Neill and photographer Paul Shoul have photos of the damage to one of the Union St. houses. Over at WHMP, they have eyewitness accounts of what happened.
Talk of increasing participation in the Ward Three Neighborhood Watch program was started after local radio host Bill Dwight posted this link to their Web site on the Facebook group’s wall, and Northampton resident Harpo Jaegar is calling for a watch program on his blog as well.
But the Facebook group is where the real collective action goes beyond the media coverage, as the group’s discussion section has already broken out into an impromptu organizing committee for aid:
There’s also already been action taken on a proposed benefit concert, with over a dozen performers already committed.
This is the real benefit of citizen journalism and collective action on the Web. When there’s some sort of political controversy, or an issue that has multiple sides to it, having the same people gathering, organizing and acting on information can be dangerous – points get skewed, things taken out of context. But here you have a neighborhood acting together to keep each other updated on a tragic incident, as well as organizing an actual response, offering food and aid to the victims.
I wish I could do more to help in this situation, but I’m home in New Jersey for the holidays, so for now I’ll just encourage everyone to check out the Facebook group and see how they can get involved in the response. I’m sure when everything calms down there will be a designated place to send food, clothes and money, but until then, stay tuned.
Update 7:38 p.m.: MassLive has video from the press conference online now:
| Northampton struck by rash of Arson fires |
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