As a follow up, it’s worth sharing that the Chicago Red Cross‘ “Voluntweeters to the Rescue” story that I blogged about previously got picked up today by Newsradio 780 reporter Bernie Tafoya. Here’s one of his reports that aired during this morning’s newscasts. http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2011/02/21/stranded-motorists-used-twitter-during-blizzard/.

I’m hoping the Red Cross experience with Twitter during the Chicago Blizzard will convince the City of Chicago to take a closer look at how Twitter can easily be used to respond to emergencies and disasters. Given that the Red Cross carried out its Twitter Blizzard Rescue with little to no budget, relying solely on a band of volunteers, it is a great lesson on the power of crowdsourcing and the right social media tools when disaster strikes.

This story is getting a lot of interest — just do a search of @ChicagoRedCross on Twitter to see the number of people tweeting about it. It’s definitely worth talking about. Hope you spread the word.