Just thought I'd put in my experiences from watching how social media is used over east.
I've been watching the CFA and RFS facebook pages over here.
www.facebook.com/cfavic
and
www.facebook.com/nswrfs
which provide pretty good updates. I think the RFS page is probably more social media friendly, their updates are often made for twitter so you get need to know info in the first line, whereas the CFA ones are set out so you need to expand it to get info buried halfway down the page. RFS also post community maps more often than the CFA which keep them on their website. Both seem to be way ahead of most traditional media who seem to repeat alerts that are hours old. ABC local does better but still lags a little way at times. They both have an app,
http://www.cfa.vic.gov.au/plan-prepare/fireready-app/
and
http://www.rfs.nsw.gov.au/dsp_content.cfm?cat_id=131251
Haven't used the rfs 'Fires near me' but the cfa 'Fire Ready' app works ok most of the time. You can set up alert zones to tell you when an incident near you happens, although probably 70% of them near me (Melbourne urban fringe) are medical alerts or structures.
Not really social media, but the RFS incident map gets mirrored to a google crisis map
http://google.org/crisismap/2013-nsw-bushfires
while I have found this little beauty for the Vic fires (which even shows aircraft disposition)
http://incidentalert.com.au/iav4/veMapv2.asp#close
There are problems with social media, people spreading rumor, information gets outdated and needs to be kept on top of, facebook posts in particular get replies that go way off topic at times. There will probably always be gaps, people wont have data or mobile coverage, won't have a radio or won't know which channel to listen to, but there are so many more ways to get info than there used to be.