En route to work with venti in hand, my curiosity was piqued by the fire trucks, ambulances, police cars and helicopter in Downtown Crossing (DTX) this morning (note: helicopter was overhead, not actually in DTX).

Now anyone familiar with DTX knows that this is somewhat normal here, but even this spread was slightly excessive for a Wednesday morning.

Enter Twitter. At my desk, I’m quick to realize that I’m not alone in my confusion (via Twitter search). Several other early morning commuters en route to work shared my curiosity. Within seconds both @Boston_Fireman and @Boston_Police had updates.

This comes on the heals of an interesting classroom debate regarding the value of Twitter; also an internal conversation I’ve been having quite frequently.

Despite the unfortunate injuries this morning, I’m encouraged by how these events help to illustrate a.) how Twitter can be used as a news aggregater and b.) that the city’s “getting it” – meaning that it’s offering immediate access to information and news through dynamic means.

Now if they could just fix the Red Line.