Caitria and Morgan O'Neill: How to step up in the face of disaster

51,205 views ・ 2012-08-14

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Translator: Timothy Covell Reviewer: Morton Bast
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(Video) Newscaster: There's a large path of destruction here in town.
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... pulling trees from the ground, shattering windows,
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taking the roofs off of homes ...
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Caitria O'Neill: That was me
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in front of our house in Monson, Massachusetts last June.
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After an EF3 tornado ripped straight through our town
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and took parts of our roof off,
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I decided to stay in Massachusetts,
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instead of pursuing the master's program
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I had moved my boxes home that afternoon for.
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Morgan O'Neill: So, on June 1, we weren't disaster experts,
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but on June 3, we started faking it.
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This experience changed our lives,
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and now we're trying to change the experience.
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CO: So, tornadoes don't happen in Massachusetts,
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and I was cleverly standing in the front yard when one came over the hill.
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After a lamppost flew by, my family and I sprinted into the basement.
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Trees were thrown against the house, the windows exploded.
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When we finally got out the back door,
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transformers were burning in the street.
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MO: I was here in Boston.
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I'm a PhD student at MIT,
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and I happen to study atmospheric science.
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Actually, it gets weirder --
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I was in the museum of science at the time the tornado hit,
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playing with the tornado display --
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(Laughter)
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so I missed her call.
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I get a call from Caitria, hear the news, and start tracking the radar online
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to call the family back when another supercell was forming in their area.
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I drove home late that night with batteries and ice.
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We live across the street from a historic church
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that had lost its very iconic steeple in the storm.
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It had become a community gathering place overnight.
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The town hall and the police department had also suffered direct hits,
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and so people wanting to help or needing information went to the church.
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CO: We walked to the church because we heard they had hot meals,
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but when we arrived, we found problems.
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There were a couple large, sweaty men with chainsaws
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standing in the center of the church, but nobody knew where to send them
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because no one knew the extent of the damage yet.
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As we watched, they became frustrated and left
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to go find somebody to help on their own.
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MO: So we started organizing. Why? It had to be done.
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We found Pastor Bob and offered to give the response some infrastructure.
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And then, armed with just two laptops and one air card,
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we built a recovery machine.
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(Applause)
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CO: That was a tornado, and everyone's heading to the church
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to drop things off and volunteer.
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MO: Everyone's donating clothing.
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We should inventory the donations piling up here.
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CO: And we need a hotline. Can you make a Google Voice number?
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MO: Sure. And we need to tell people what not to bring.
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I'll make a Facebook account. Can you print flyers?
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CO: Yeah, but we don't even know what houses are accepting help.
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We need to canvas and send out volunteers.
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MO: We need to tell people what not to bring.
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Hey, there's a news truck. I'll tell them.
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CO: You got my number off the news? We don't need more freezers!
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(Together) MO: Insurance won't cover it? CO: Juice boxes coming in an hour?
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Together: Someone get me Post-its!
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(Laughter)
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CO: And then the rest of the community figured out that we had answers.
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MO: I can donate three water heaters, but someone needs to come pick them up.
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CO: My car is in my living room!
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MO: My boyscout troop would like to rebuild 12 mailboxes.
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CO: My puppy is missing and insurance doesn't cover chimneys.
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MO: My church group of 50 would like housing and meals for a week
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while we repair properties.
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CO: You sent me to that place on Washington Street yesterday,
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and now I'm covered in poison ivy.
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(Laughter)
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So this is what filled our days.
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We had to learn how to answer questions quickly
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and to solve problems in a minute or less;
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otherwise, something more urgent would come up,
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and it wouldn't get done.
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MO: We didn't get our authority from the board of selectmen
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or the emergency management director or the United Way.
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We just started answering questions and making decisions
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because someone -- anyone -- had to.
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And why not me? I'm a campaign organizer.
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I'm good at Facebook.
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And there's two of me.
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(Laughter)
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CO: The point is, if there's a flood or a fire or a hurricane,
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you, or somebody like you,
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are going to step up and start organizing things.
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The other point is that it is hard.
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MO: Lying on the ground after another 17-hour day,
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Caitria and I would empty our pockets
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and try to place dozens of scraps of paper into context --
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all bits of information that had to be remembered and matched
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in order to help someone.
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After another day and a shower at the shelter,
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we realized it shouldn't be this hard.
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CO: In a country like ours where we breathe Wi-Fi,
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leveraging technology for a faster recovery should be a no-brainer.
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Systems like the ones that we were creating on the fly
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could exist ahead of time.
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And if some community member is in this organizing position
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in every area after every disaster,
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these tools should exist.
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MO: So, we decided to build them:
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a recovery in a box, something that could be deployed after every disaster
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by any local organizer.
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CO: I decided to stay in the country, give up the master's in Moscow
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and to work full-time to make this happen.
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In the course of the past year,
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we've become experts in the field of community-powered disaster recovery.
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And there are three main problems that we've observed
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with the way things work currently.
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MO: The tools.
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Large aid organizations are exceptional at bringing massive resources to bear
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after a disaster,
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but they often fulfill very specific missions, and then they leave.
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This leaves local residents to deal with the thousands of spontaneous volunteers,
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thousands of donations,
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and all with no training and no tools.
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So they use Post-its or Excel or Facebook.
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But none of these tools allow you to value high-priority information
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amidst all of the photos and well-wishes.
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CO: The timing.
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Disaster relief is essentially a backwards political campaign.
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In a political campaign, you start with no interest
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and no capacity to turn that into action.
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You build both gradually,
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until a moment of peak mobilization at the time of the election.
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In a disaster, however, you start with all of the interest
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and none of the capacity.
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And you've only got about seven days
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to capture 50 percent of all of the Web searches that will ever be made
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to help your area.
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Then some sporting event happens,
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and you've got only the resources that you've collected thus far
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to meet the next five years of recovery needs.
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This is the slide for Katrina.
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This is the curve for Joplin.
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And this is the curve for the Dallas tornadoes in April,
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where we deployed software.
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There's a gap here.
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Affected households have to wait for the insurance adjuster to visit
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before they can start accepting help on their properties.
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And you've only got about four days of interest in Dallas.
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MO: Data.
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Data is inherently unsexy,
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but it can jump-start an area's recovery.
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FEMA and the state will pay 85 percent of the cost
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of a federally-declared disaster,
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leaving the town to pay the last 15 percent of the bill.
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Now that expense can be huge,
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but if the town can mobilize X amount of volunteers for Y hours,
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the dollar value of that labor used goes toward the town's contribution.
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But who knows that?
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Now try to imagine the sinking feeling you get
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when you've just sent out 2,000 volunteers and you can't prove it.
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CO: These are three problems with a common solution.
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If we can get the right tools at the right time
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to the people who will inevitably step up
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and start putting their communities back together,
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we can create new standards in disaster recovery.
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MO: We needed canvasing tools, donations databasing,
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needs reporting, remote volunteer access,
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all in an easy-to-use website.
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CO: And we needed help.
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Alvin, our software engineer and co-founder, has built these tools.
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Chris and Bill have volunteered their time to use operations and partnerships.
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And we've been flying into disaster areas since this past January,
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setting up software, training residents
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and licensing the software to areas that are preparing for disasters.
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MO: One of our first launches was after the Dallas tornadoes
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this past April.
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We flew into a town that had a static, outdated website
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and a frenetic Facebook feed, trying to structure the response,
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and we launched our platform.
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All of the interest came in the first four days,
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but by the time they lost the news cycle,
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that's when the needs came in,
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yet they had this massive resource of what people were able to give
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and they've been able to meet the needs of their residents.
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CO: So it's working, but it could be better.
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Emergency preparedness is a big deal in disaster recovery
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because it makes towns safer and more resilient.
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Imagine if we could have these systems ready to go in a place
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before a disaster.
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So that's what we're working on.
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We're working on getting the software to places so people expect it,
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so people know how to use it
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and so it can be filled ahead of time
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with that micro-information that drives recovery.
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MO: It's not rocket science.
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These tools are obvious and people want them.
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In our hometown, we trained a half-dozen residents
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to run these Web tools on their own,
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because Caitria and I live here, in Boston.
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They took to it immediately, and now they are forces of nature.
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There are over three volunteer groups working almost every day,
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and have been since June 1 of last year,
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to make sure these residents get what they need and get back in their homes.
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They have hotlines and spreadsheets and data.
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CO: And that makes a difference.
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June 1 this year marked the one-year anniversary of the Monson tornado,
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and our community's never been more connected or more empowered.
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We've been able to see the same transformation in Texas and in Alabama.
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Because it doesn't take Harvard or MIT
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to fly in and fix problems after a disaster;
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it takes a local.
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No matter how good an aid organization is at what they do,
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they eventually have to go home.
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But if you give locals the tools,
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if you show them what they can do to recover,
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they become experts.
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(Applause)
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MO: All right. Let's go.
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(Applause)
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