The Government’s Hurricane Sandy Pages Play By Play

With its satellites, scanners and links to local officials, the federal government is often the best source for trusted information during a hurricane, tornado or other natural disaster.

Just having important information doesn’t mean much, though, if the public can’t find it or is too confused to do anything with the information once it does have it.

That’s a lesson officials learned during Hurricane Katrina when “separate websites were used to share information for evacuees, friends, and families and to publish lists of names” and “so many websites sprang up that it became difficult to find the specific website for the information, resources, or reconnection one needed,” according to a lessons learned report on social media and Hurricane Sandy published by the Homeland Security Department last week.