An important fire burnt some 1,300 hectares at the East of Marseille (my hometown in the South-East of France). Marseille is the second biggest French town, with almost 900,000 inhabitants, surrounded by hills and 40km of coast. It is expending right now, with many important projects for its development. Marseille has been chosen to become the European Capital of Culture in 2013 (www.marseille-provence2013.fr). The World Water Forum 2012 will be held in Marseille. So Marseille is attractive, developing at a good pace despite the world crisis, but stays really traditional in some ways.
Yesterday night and this morning (from 11pm to 6am) during the fire, nor LCM (the local television), nor La Provence (the main newspaper) were able to provide information about the neighborhood evacuated or the zones threatened by the fire. Only the solidarity between the inhabitants has allowed to share news. Once more, the chats, and the different social networks have been the ones where to find some news. Many of my facebook friends have given precious information. People were uploading and sharing pictures of the fire, while the newspaper, on its well-followed website was not posting anything. On Twitter the hastag #Marseille has become the one to follow. Many tweets were RT (retweeted) to spread the word of the places evacuated. Have a look at this graph showing how much the word 'Marseille' was used the past week:
La Provence posted an article today (in French) explaining how they provided news to the population all-night long, praising its real-time (sic) sharing of the news, creating many reactions from the readers. Nevertheless, let's hope this tragic event will help the local journalists realize how much we depend on them, and let's hope we'll have a more performant news chain, using the modern tools of media.
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