How to step up in the face of disaster Caitria Morgan ONeill

there’s a large path of destruction here

in town it here pulling trees from the

ground shattering windows taking the

roofs off oh that was me in front of our

house in months in Massachusetts last

June after an ef3 tornado ripped

straight through our town and took parts

of our roof off I decided to stay in

Massachusetts instead of pursuing the

master’s program I had moved my boxes

home that afternoon for so On June 1st

we weren’t disaster experts but on June

3rd we started faking it this experience

changed our lives and now we’re trying

to change the experience so tornadoes

don’t happen in Massachusetts and I was

cleverly standing in the front yard when

one came over the hill after a lamppost

flew by my family and I sprinted into

the basement trees were thrown against

the house the windows exploded when we

finally got out the back door

transformers were burning in the street

so I was here in Boston I’m a PhD

student at MIT and I happened to study

atmospheric science actually it gets

weirder so I was in the Museum of

science at the time the tornado hit

playing with the tornado display so I

missed her call so I get the call from

caitria I hear the news and I start

tracking the radar online to call the

family back when another supercell was

forming in their area and I drove home

late that night with batteries and ice

we live across the street from an

historic church that had lost its very

iconic steeple in the storm it had

become a community gathering place

overnight the Town Hall and the police

department had also suffered direct hits

and so people wanting to help or needing

information went to the church we walked

up to the church because we heard that

they had hot meals but when we arrived

we found problems there were a couple

large sweaty men with chainsaws standing

in the center of the church but nobody

knew where to send them because no one

knew the extent of the damage yet and as

we watched they became frustrated and

left to go find somebody to help on

their own so we started organizing why

it had to be done we found Pastor Bob

and offered to give the response some

infrastructure

and then armed with just two laptops and

one err card we built a recovery machine

that was a tornado and everyone’s

heading to the church to drop things off

and volunteer everyone’s donating

clothing we should really inventory the

donations that are piling up here yeah

and we need a hotline can you make a

Google Voice number yeah sure and we

need to tell people what not to bring

I’ll make a Facebook account can you

print flyers for the neighborhood’s yeah

but we don’t even know what houses are

accepting help at this point we need to

canvass and send out volunteers we need

to tell people what not to bring hey

there’s a news truck I’ll tell them you

got my number off the news we don’t need

any more freezers and you need a ruler

someone get me post-its and then the

rest of the community figured out that

we had answers I can donate three water

heaters but someone needs to come pick

them up my car is in my living room my

Boy Scout Troop would like to rebuild

twelve mailboxes the puppy’s missing and

insurance just doesn’t cover the

chimneys my church group of 50 would

like housing and meals for a week while

we repair properties you sent me to that

place on Washington Street yesterday and

now I’m covered in poison ivy so this is

what filled our days we had to learn how

to answer questions quickly and to solve

problems in about a minute or less

because otherwise something more urgent

would come up and it just wouldn’t get

done we didn’t get our authority from

the Board of Selectmen or the Emergency

Management Director or the United Way we

just started answering questions and

making decisions because someone anyone

had to and why not me I’m a campaign

organizer I’m good at Facebook and

there’s two of me

the point is if there’s a flood or a

fire or a hurricane you or somebody like

you are going to step up and start

organizing things the other point is

that it is hard lying on the ground

after another 17-hour day kay tree and I

would empty our pockets and try to place

dozens of scraps of paper into context

all bits of information that had to be

remembered and matched in order to help

someone after another day and a shower

at the shelter we realized it shouldn’t

be this hard

in a country like ours where we breathe

Wi-Fi leveraging technology for a faster

recovery should be a no-brainer systems

like the ones that we were creating on

the fly could exist ahead of time and if

some community member is in this

organizing position in every area after

every disaster these tools should exist

so we decided to build them a recovery

in a box something that could be

deployed after every disaster by any

local organizer I decided to stay in the

country give up the Masters in Moscow

and to work full-time to make this

happen in the course of the past year

we’ve become experts in the field of

community power disaster recovery and

there are three main problems that we’ve

observed with the way things work

currently the tools large aid

organizations are exceptional at

bringing massive resources to bear after

a disaster but they often fulfill very

specific missions and then they leave

this leaves local residents to deal with

the thousands of spontaneous volunteers

thousands of donations and all with no

training and no tools so they use

post-its or Excel or Facebook but none

of these tools allow you to value

high-priority information amidst all of

the photos and well-wishes

but timing disaster relief is

essentially a backwards political

campaign in a political campaign you

start with no interest and no capacity

to turn that into action you build both

gradually until a moment of peak

mobilization at the time of the election

in a disaster however you start with all

of the interest and none of the capacity

and you’ve only got about seven days to

capture 50% of all of the web searches

that will ever be made to help your area

then some sporting event happens and

you’ve got only the resources that

you’ve collected thus far to meet the

next five years of recovery needs this

is the slide for Katrina this is the

curve for Joplin and

this is the curve for the Dallas

tornadoes in April where we deployed

software there’s a gap here affected

households have to wait for the

insurance adjuster to visit before they

can start accepting help on their

properties and you’ve only got about

four days of interest in Dallas data

data is inherently unsexy but it can

jump-start an area’s recovery FEMA in

the state will pay 85% of the cost of a

federally declared disaster leaving the

town to pay the last fifteen percent of

the bill now that expense can be huge

but if the town can mobilize X amount of

volunteers for y hours the dollar value

of that labor used goes toward the

town’s contribution but who knows that

now try to imagine the sinking feeling

you get when you’ve just sent out 2,000

volunteers and you can’t prove it these

are three problems with a common

solution if we can get the right tools

at the right time to the people who will

inevitably step up and start putting

their communities back together we can

create new standards in disaster

recovery we needed canvassing tools

donations databasing needs reporting

remote volunteer access all in an

easy-to-use website and we needed help

Alvin our software engineer and

co-founder has built these tools Chris

and Bill have volunteered their time to

use in operations and partnerships and

we’ve been flying into disaster areas

since this past January setting up

software training residents and

licensing the software to areas that are

preparing for disasters one of our first

launches was after the Dallas tornadoes

this past April we flew into a town that

had a static outdated website and a

frenetic Facebook feed trying to

structure the response and we launched

her platform all of the interest came in

the first four days but by the time they

lost the news cycle that’s when the

needs came in yet they had this massive

resource of what people are able to give

and they’ve been able to meet the needs

of the residents so it’s working but it

could be better emergency preparedness

is a big deal in disaster recovery

because it makes towns safer and more

resilient imagine if we could have these

systems ready to go in a place before a

disaster so that’s what we’re working on

we’re working on getting the software to

places so people expect it so people

know how to use it and so it can be

filled ahead of time with that micro

information that drives recovery it’s

not

at science these tools are obvious and

people want them in our hometown we

trained a half dozen residents to run

these web tools on their own because

caitria and I live here in Boston they

took to it immediately and now there are

forces of nature there are over three

volunteer groups working almost every

day and have been since June 1st of last

year to make sure that these residents

get what they need and get back in their

homes they have hotlines and

spreadsheets and data and that makes a

difference

June 1st this year marked the one-year

anniversary of the Monson tornado and

our communities never been more

connected or more empowered we’ve been

able to see this same transformation in

Texas and in Alabama because it doesn’t

take Harvard or MIT to fly in and fix

problems after a disaster it takes a

local no matter how good an aid

organization is at what they do they

eventually have to go home but if you

give locals the tools if you show them

what they can do to recover they become

experts