School shootings are always shocking in their suddenness and their brutality, and the one yesterday morning at Virginia Tech is no different. According to news reports, 32 people and the gunmen were killed in the attack, making it one of the worst in the nation’s history.

People are already wondering, though, whether the attack could have been mitigated somewhat by quicker action on the part of the university. Via [BoingBoing][boing], I learned of [this New York Times report][1], which notes that the shooting was first reported to police at 7:15 after two people had been killed. It wasn’t until the gunmen moved to the schools engineering building at 9:45 that he killed the remaining 30 victims. In a [second Times article][2], they report that the school didn’t notify faculty and staff of the emergency until they sent out a campus-wide email at 9:26, and even then, some people did not receive the message until after their nine o’clock classes were over.

[boing]: http://www.boingboing.net/2007/04/17/va_tech_questions_co.html “Boing Boing”
[1]: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/17/us/17virginia.html?pagewanted=2&ei=5088&en=3b4ba06207da3bcf&ex=1334462400&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss “Virginia Gunman Identified as a Student”
[2]: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/17/us/17scene.html?ex=1334462400&en=7eb42f678d2775d4&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss “Drumbeat of Shots, Broken by Pauses to Reload”

### A Better Alert?

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about new uses for [Twitter][3], the popular SMS-messaging service, and I think the use of such mobile technology could be really useful in emergency situations like the one that struck Virginia Tech. Imagine if the school had created its own Twitter account and encouraged its students, faculty, and staff to sign up to the service and receive official updates on their cell phones. As soon as concrete information had come in about the shooting, administrators could’ve sounded an alert via Twitter, and people would’ve heard the news immediately. (In the illustration accompanying this post, I’ve imagined what such an alert might look like on the Twitter site.)

People have already started using Twitter to [track earthquakes in the US][4], and I [posted last week][5] about how Thursday’s quake in Mexico was first reported by Twitter users. Why can’t this sort of rapid response too be harnessed for more sorts of emergency alert systems?

### Other Uses?

Are there other services like Twitter that could be used to provide mobile alerts? Can you think of other ways people might use these services to provide rapid news? Post your thoughts as a comment, please!

[3]: http://twitter.com “Twitter”
[4]: http://blog.codahale.com/2007/03/02/sfearthquakes-twitter-earthquakes/ “sfearthquakes = Twitter + Earthquakes”
[5]: http://trisignia.com/2007/04/13/twittering-the-mexico-city-blog/ “Twittering the Mexico City Earthquake”