The recent wildfires in Southern California overwhelmed traditional modes of communication, such as radio and television, due to the many transmitters located in the path of the raging fires. The Associated Press reported that more than 500,000 citizens had evacuated their homes and that the fires had consumed more than 373,000 acres of land — roughly the size of New York City. Many distressed citizens and homeowners turned to their mobile phones to stay in touch — so much so that San Diego authorities instituted a ban on all cellular communications because these conversations were taking up to much bandwidth, preventing first responders from communicating with one another.

As a result, many turned to Web 2.0 technologies to spread and share information. Differing media outlets and private citizens used blogs/podcasts, wikis and mashups to provide a collective, location-aware intelligence and support for updating users on evacuation routes and centers; which neighborhoods and homes were either under threat, already destroyed, or saved; or when safe return was permitted back into these neighborhoods and homes. Some of the more visible sites were Flickr and YouTube, where users posted photos. Media outlets used Google mashups with clickable icons on the various fires locations, as well details on fire size, containment efforts, fatality and injury status, and structural damage estimates. In the San Diego area, Twitter (a mobile-centric social-networking application) allowed media outlets to update users using Short Message Service text messaging.

However, it appears that the emergency management and first-responder community focused on citizen-centric Web 2.0 technology dissemination. For example, daily damage assessment and situational reports were at times completed on paper to include geographic estimates of damage to an area, a list of damaged facilities, injury/fatality estimates and estimates as to what kinds of resources (equipment) would be required. To improve this process, emergency managers should consider using blogs and wikis to better share information to assist in disaster management relief efforts. Blogs are more suitable for presenting multiple-agency perspectives in chronological order, while wikis are — rather than e-mail - should be used for information synthesis and as organizational tools than. They will work only where a form of "Web democracy" exists that can foster rapid and easy collaboration in a particular community of interest. Blogs and wikis are appropriate where there is joint responsibility and an incentive to contribute, and when the process involves ongoing discussion and change.