Facebook will let businesses and aid groups post to pages it creates during natural disasters and other crises

• Facebook says it will now let businesses and other groups post information to emergency pages it creates during natural disasters, terrorist attacks and other crises.
• Businesses and groups that have verified Facebook pages will be able to share information about their services to the company's Community Help feature.
• The feature has been launched in response to more than 500 crises since it started last year, Facebook says.

An aerial photo of the devastation left behind from the North Bay wildfires north of San Francisco.

California Highway Patrol | Golden Gate Division | Reuters

Facebook said Thursday it will let businesses, aid organizations and other groups post information to the emergency pages it creates after natural disasters, terrorist attacks and other crises.

Businesses and groups that have verified Facebook pages will first be able to share information about their services to the company's Community Help feature, a spokesperson told CNBC.

Facebook first created Community Help a year ago in areas where the company's Safety Check feature has been activated. Safety Check lets users notify others that they're safe during emergencies.

"One of the things we started to see in the midst of hurricanes, attacks, wildfires, et cetera, was people trying to surface and share resources," said Asha Sharma, product lead for Facebook Social Good.

Users have written more than 750,000 posts during 500 different crises on Community Help pages, the company said.

Groups like Save the Children and International Medical Corps and businesses like Lyft and J.P. Morgan Chase have told Facebook they plan to use the feature.

— CNBC's Julia Boorstin contributed to this report.