"It's going to be, 'Grab phone, tweet.'" Hutton, who left the agency in 2020, is among the legion of government personnel, public safety officers and professional disaster communicators who reach for Twitter, where tens of millions of Americans maintain accounts, during a crisis. Public agencies use the platform to issue evacuation orders, warn of active shooters, dispel misinformation and direct residents away from road closures or toward shelters. During disasters, stranded civilians use the app to call for help, evacuees use it to check on their homes and journalists use it to gather news. But today, Twitter's future is in question. The site's new owner Elon Musk fired about half of the company's 7,500 employees two weeks ago and then issued an ultimatum on Wednesday that prompted hundreds more to leave. Several teams essential to keeping the site functioning were cut to a single worker or none by the end of the week, and engineers said the site is likely to crash sooner or later.