By Tom Howell Jr. and Andrea Noble
For The Washington Post

The D.C. government has temporarily halted use of one of its most popular Twitter accounts in order to get a tighter handle on information disseminated about emergency operations.

The District’s Fire and Emergency Medical Services (EMS) Twitter account has been on hiatus since Aug. 30, when the communications officer who ran it went on vacation, officials said. The account, which provided real-time information on emergency incidents in the city ranging from traffic accidents to fatal shootings, has been suspended as officials decide what information is safe to put online.

“We looked at some of the information that was going out on the Twitter account, and decided it needed to be filtered through the director of communications first,” Fire and EMS Chief Kenneth Ellerbe said on Wednesday at Mayor Vincent C. Gray’s weekly press conference.

If incorrect information goes out on Twitter, he said, “it puts all of us at risk.”

Read the full article on The Washington Times’ site.