The photo was posted on Twitter, called “tweeting,” at 4:50 p.m. that afternoon. He stayed in his office to do some more work, and the photo was re-tweeted for the first time at 4:56. The Associated Press had it by 5:21, CNN at 5:14, ABC World News Tonight at 5:20 and Boston’s WBZ television at 6:38.
Photo captured by downtown businessman John Garvey from his Tower Square office of the approaching tornado
SPRINGFIELD – An anonymous online commentator had a to-the-point reaction to the photos John J. Garvey took from the windows of his offices on the 24th floor of Tower Square on the afternoon of June 1.
Why not put the iPhone down, get away from the window and go some place safe?
Garvey, president of Garvey Communications Associates, laughs as he recounts the story now.
“It was my first experience with horror,” he says. “I was frozen, watching something that was very bad.”
Garvey’s business is marketing, advertising and public relations, and, for the past few years at least, he’s focusd on the burgeoning world of social media and how his clients can harness Internet websites like Facebook and Twitter that allow user-generated prose and photos to travel around the world very, very quickly.
In the wake of the June 1 tornadoes, he’s monitored how his own photos went around the world in a whirl. The social-media tracking software that Garvey uses to professionally track the Twitter and Facebook universe showed a reaction more volcanic than tornadic with the phrases “Springfield” and “tornado” getting more nearly 5,000 immediate Twitter mentions, placing it as one of the top trending topics for the week on a worldwide network often dominated by entertainment and sports.
“These numbers are just amazing,” Garvey said.
Before the tornado hit, Garvey and his staff had always looked forward to watching thunderstorms approach the Connecticut River from their 24th-floor perch. Something about the roiling clouds seen from above was mesmerizing, he said.
“We are watching this from a position of safety,” Garvey said. “Of course, everything always looks nice and green and pleasant from up here.”
Not on June 1, though. The skies blackened. The reflective Monarch Place building next door turned dark for lack of sunshine.
Then, a tree branch flew past Garvey’s window, an unusual occurrence that high up in the world.
“It looked like a witch riding a broomstick,” he said.
He got his first picture of the approaching funnel cloud.
Then the tornado moved behind the Monarch Place building. Garvey said he and his staff watched it move up Center Street on its way to East Forest Park and on to Wilbraham (where he lives), Monson and beyond.
“It looked like a blender,” Garvey said, “but, I had no idea it was churning up houses.”
He didn’t realize the full extent of the damage outside until his staff started leaving to go home. They encountered blocked roads, downed trees and police barricades.
His own home was only accessible with a walk through the woods, and his firm’s original offices at 975 Main St. in Wilbraham, where he started business 20 years ago this month, were gone.
Garvey posted his photo on Twitter, called “tweeting,” at 4:50 p.m. that afternoon. He stayed in his office to do some more work, and the photo was re-tweeted for the first time at 4:56. The Associated Press had it by 5:21, CNN at 5:14, ABC World News Tonight at 5:20 and Boston’s WBZ television at 6:38.
“Things just move with lightning speed,” he said.
The original photo had 723 page-views as of June 13, and that doesn’t count people who saw it on all the other media outlets.
On MassLive.com, tornado-related photo galleries, which included more than 700 individual images, captured over 3 million page views on MassLive.com over the past two and a half weeks. One gallery had over 975,000 views alone.
“In the hours and days following the tornadoes that devastated so many communities across Western Massachusetts we had readers from across the region and the world searching for details, looking for images and stories that would tell the human side of the story,” said Ed Kubosiak Jr., editor-in-chief of MassLive.com. “It was amazing to see the community pull together, neighbors helping neighbors, talking about their shared experiences and asking for ways they could help those who were impacted most by the storm.”
The photographs captured by staff for The Republican and MassLive.com, in addition to photos submitted by community members, “gave the tornadoes a face, one that inspired awe at the power and destructive force of the storms, while at the same time showing the resiliency of the people,” Kubosiak said.