Toronto, Ontario is coated in ice tonight. A severe winter ice storm slowing the city to a slippery crawl, with widespread power outages. It’s a city in crisis.
Mayor Rob Frod of Toronto is not the Mayor of Toronto; it’s a Twitter parody account, prepared for the purpose of poking fun at Mayor Rob Ford.
A tale of two different worlds: One a joke and the other reality: @TOMayorFord and @TOMayorFrod The later proving the difference. #topoli
— The Mason (@Mason5280) December 23, 2013
So, given the need for crisis communications, who do you turn to in a pinch? Hopefully it would be the Mayor, but in the absence of a functioning Mayor, you turn to the Twitter account that pokes fun at the Mayor. @MayorRobFrod has been tweeting out news of power outages, transit service updates, warming centres, flight delays, and other emergency management info.
Here's the latest City of #Toronto storm update: http://t.co/HcGUEnOiU2 Thanks everyone for remaining calm & patient! #citystorm #TOpoli
— Mayor Rob Frod (@TOMayorFrod) December 23, 2013
Truth, stranger than fiction.
More Toronto news:
- Radio: 680 News for 24×7 news radio and an Extreme Weather Centre with weather news.
- Radio: News Talk 1010 for more Toronto news.
- Radio: CBC Toronto Twitter feed
- Scanner: Greater Toronto Area scanner feeds.
- Newspaper: The Globe and Mail
- Newspaper: Toronto Star
- Television: CTV News Toronto
- Power company: Toronto Hydro outage map (loads very slowly)
- Power company: Toronto Hydro Twitter
- Twitter hashtag (via tchat.io): #darkTO, #icestorm2013
- Twitter “Toronto Politics”: #ToPoli
The real Rob Frod has come forth with his true identity.
An map of Toronto Hydro outages, attributed to @toastywaffle as a Google fusion table:
Edward Vielmetti's Wordpress weblog 
Yay, thanks! If you want to embed the fusion table so that it loads dynamically in the post, you can use the following code via pastebin: http://pastebin.com/GRbyYBJE
I’ll keep updating the map as the day goes on (and as long as the Toronto Hydro site remains sluggish).