Jackie Fewell, a local real estate agent who had been evacuated to a hotel here from her home at Possum Kingdom Lake, posted complaints about AT&T on a blog that she had started on her company’s Web site.
At the same time, Amy Sabbatini, who owns a weekend home at Possum Kingdom Lake, called a friend whose business is a major AT&T customer. That friend called executives at the phone company.
Other readers wrote to the blog, saying they also had high-level contacts at AT&T and would see if they could help. One reader said he worked there and would get on the case “A.S.A.P.”
Within hours, an AT&T truck with a mobile cell tower had pulled up to the Mineral Wells hotel where Ms. Fewell was staying. The tower has been providing five strong bars ever since.
“We all are feeling really empowered,” Ms. Fewell said in an interview at the blog’s command center here, about 25 miles east of Possum Kingdom Lake and 50 miles west of Fort Worth.
The blog is another example of citizens harnessing social media to cope with a disaster, but this one has an advantage: it is written by and for a moneyed and well-connected clientele. These are people who are used to making things happen, not being passive victims. Their power, combined with that of the Internet, has produced a blog with clout.
“We’ve got influential people, and let me tell you, we capitalize on it,” Ms. Fewell said.
One is Ms. Sabbatini, 35, who works with the evacuees during the day and at night returns to Fort Worth, where she lives with her husband, Rory Sabbatini, the professional golfer, and their three children. She grew up in the Possum Kingdom area, and her parents live there full time.
“My husband plays pro golf on the P.G.A. tour, and I’ve been fortunate enough to travel the country and meet a lot of people, and I have had a lot of resources at my fingertips,” said Ms. Sabbatini, who was working the phones in the command center. “At the same time, the Internet is an amazing place.”
Some of the blog’s readers and area residents were able to have aerial surveys conducted of their properties — even though the airspace was restricted because of the fires — and they shared them on the blog.
Another resident, Mike Rhoden, a former president of the area’s Chamber of Commerce, asked his son, who has a friend who once worked at Google Earth, to see if its satellites could rescan the lake community to provide updated images. On Friday evening at the command center, Mr. Rhoden flashed around his cellphone with a message that Google Earth was “already on it.”
The blog sprang up here in the shadow of the blazing fires that have scorched great swaths of drought-ridden Texas. At Possum Kingdom Lake, they have destroyed at least 167 homes, 124 outbuildings and two churches and scorched 126,000 acres of ranchland, making it one of the worst-hit areas of the state.
The fires are 50 percent contained, but the ground is still smoldering, and officials said the flames could reignite. Power and water are only sporadically available, and live electrical wires are exposed, so the authorities are continuing to bar some residents from their homes.
Anita Foster, a spokeswoman for the Dallas chapter of the American Red Cross, who is overseeing a shelter here (mostly for firefighters) at the junior high school, said Ms. Fewell’s blog was one of the first that she had seen take hold during a natural disaster in the United States.
“It’s the first time in my experience in a domestic disaster where citizens are taking control of their information,” Ms. Foster said. “We’re on the cusp of how we can use digital media to respond to these things. But it takes citizens to keep it together.”
The blog also took off because there is no single government entity that oversees the lake community, leaving a vacuum in terms of centralized information. Several Facebook pages and other Web sites, including one for the local newspaper and the federal fire management team, are also devoted to the Possum Kingdom Lake fire.
But the citizen blog is the most comprehensive and immediate. Ms. Fewell, 53, a Sally Field type who has no qualms about challenging authority, started typing from her hotel room nine days ago because she was frustrated by the lack of reliable information and as getting questions from property owners.
About 80 percent of the 3,000 houses at Possum Kingdom Lake — some worth up to $6 million — are vacation property or weekend retreats, with owners living in Dallas, Fort Worth or farther afield. (“This is our Hamptons,” Ms. Sabbatini said.)
Right away, the site drew 650 page views; within a week, it had drawn more than 900,000. By then, Ms. Fewell and Michelle Steuber, 30, who works with her at a marketing firm, and other evacuees had taken over the conference room of the Holiday Inn Express in Mineral Wells and turned it into a campaign-style war room.
The bloggers spend their days on the phone getting notes from the field, trying to sort rumor from fact, and directing help where it is needed.
Responses can be fast.
“We posted that we needed 200 gloves at such and such a location,” Ms. Fewell said. “And someone wrote right back and said, ‘We’ll buy every glove in Fort Worth.’ And we suddenly had 50 people all wanting to bring 200 gloves, and they couldn’t be stopped.”
The command center has become a gathering spot for those unable to go home, and the mood is fairly upbeat for a natural disaster. The blog has already raised $100,000 for the volunteer firefighters. And someone showed up the other day to donate $500 in cash and a 12-pack of beer.
Still, some residents who have been home for brief periods come back with grim reports.
“There are stalks sticking up in the sky, like a surreal dream, just black stalks,” said Ruth White, 71, whose bookshop and home were spared.
Ira Mercer, Palo Pinto County sheriff, called the blog “a stroke of genius” and said it had helped his office do its job. “We don’t have the time, the staff or, frankly, the wherewithal to do it,” he said. “It’s a very effective tool.”
But he is worried about the long-term effects of the fires and predicts that despite the affluence of the community, recovery will be slow.
“It looks like a moonscape now,” the sheriff said. “Long after the circus has left town, we will be dealing with it.”
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