“#Sandy” was the top trending tag on Twitter during the devastating Hurricane Sandy, with over 400 million tweets. The use of social media by victims allowed them to share their storm experience with the world and allowed the media to pick up photos and videos that they otherwise wouldn’t have had access to.

Seven years ago, when Hurricane Katrina hit, sharing personal footage wasn’t as easy as it is today; Twitter didn’t exist and Facebook was just beginning to gain popularity.

Mohawk College professor and social media expert Peter Maurin says people feel compelled to tell their story through social media.

“People are social animals, they want to update people on what’s going on in their lives,” says Maurin. “People can share [their] experiences, if your power is out or parts of your roof are being ripped off because of the storm, it’s a way to share that sort of misery.”

Good Samaritans took to Twitter to offer up their houses as shelters for storm victims, or to simply share their power to charge electronics.

Abraham Cho @abrahamcho

Power may take days. Need a place to stay w power? We’re glad to share! We can open a bottle of wine & play Settlers! #PitchingIn #Sandy

Jenna Tatum ‏@JennaLTatum

Zone A evacuation and suspended transit service for tonight… Yikes! If anyone needs a place to stay let me know http://nyti.ms/S5dsfN #sandy

Howard Elliott, Managing Editor at the Hamilton Spectator, says that the Spec used social media to allow them to have better coverage of the storm.

“We used tools like Storify to help aggregate social media, Twitter in particular, so that we would have a very active social media file,” said Elliott. “So we have fantastic photographs of the flooding and stuff very early on, way ahead of when the wire services actually moved photography and stuff.”