Evelyn Rodriguez lived through the Dec. 26 tsunami and understands communication and info needs from the survivor side. Most of what we are doing now is essentially for family and friends. Tens of thousands of survivors have no online access although efforts are underway to provide it as widely as possible.

In an emergency, think: Cheap. Simple. Ubiquitous. 
Perhaps cellphone SMS messages that go directly to a central
wiki that is hosted by an large
easy-to-remember-even-if-I-never-imagined-I-would-be-in-a-major-disaster
organization whether it is Red Cross or Google?

What would have been helpful in the tsunami was a central phone
number everyone has memorized to call in case of emergencies. I don’t
know if they have 911 in other countries. After the tsunami, people
(those on boats, and high ground) still had cellphones. But no one knew
who to call.

These were lessons that should have been learned from the tsunami and before that from 9/11 and other times of crisis. We can’t change the events of the last week but if we do not learn from them and change the future, shame on us.

Watching the images of the Morial Convention Center raises memories of all the hours I’ve logged in that building over the years. Anyone who has been to a big convention there has seen or waited in the long lines for buses or cabs, walked miles and miles — at CTIA in March one sponsor gift was a pedometer — and been held hostage to the food services. Usually, at some point in every show there’s a moment when I think it’s hellish and I’m thrilled to escape; when it’s typical New Orleans weather, I’m relieved to go inside to the air-conditioned comfort.

Then I look back at  the people who really are being held hostage to circumstances, who are stuck in a surreal version of those lines that makes the lamented 40-minute convention waits seem like a breeze. Superman comic readers will understand when I say it is Bizarro New Orleans.

It is familiar and completely unrecognizable all at once.

First, a thank you to Robert Scoble, Nancy White, Jon Lebovsky, Julie Leung,   and others who helped get this conversation started. (8:18 am: Terry Heaton, I didn’t mean to leave you out.)  I also want to point you to a couple of other resources — my OPML blog with Katrina links and a new wiki at OJR tracking coverage, missing persons connection efforts and resources. Please stop by the wiki and contribute any links you think should be included or leave them here and I’ll do it.

If anyone can figure out how to convert the wiki to an OPML file as it’s updated please let me know. (Dave Winer, thanks for putting out the word.) David Newberger, I’ve added some resources to the wiki that might help in your efforts to build a Google map database.

Now for the hard part. More and more information is popping up on line and I don’t think collecting links is enough. Just to narrow it down to one area, very specifically, can anyone help figure out how to aggregate all of the personal status reports (missing/safe/lost/found, etc.) into one searchable database or other searchable format? Ideally, we’d be able to do the same by zip code, neighborhood, parish and other formations but if we could just accomplish an aggregated people finder that would be a huge accomplishment.

In the very short term, maybe a badge for sites with personal status reports would help or some kind of web ring/network that links them all together.

Related: Hurricane Katrina: What Can We Do?
Hurricane Katrina: Grasping the Concept

What can we do? Many people are already on their way as volunteers but, as in December, for now the most significant gesture most of us can make is a cash donation. (Some options: American Red Cross; Salvation Army; United Way; United Jewish Federation; Catholic Charities.) Leave it to the agencies to provide food, clothes and other supplies.

Another immediate need: information and information management.
Communications are completely cut off in some areas; it’s a crazy quilt
in others. People who have information to share may not have a place to
share it; those who need it may not know where to look. Some are going
to Craigslist.  Many bloggers are doing a great job but often on
the most micro of levels and not always easy to find. The Times-Picayune and other media in the hurricane’s path have
done an amazing job but many of them are in the same straits as the
people they are covering. People will need jobs, places to stay,
information about their homes, ways to share.

Philip Katner wrote me today to ask for help reaching Google with a
request; he heard from a mutual acquaintance that I knew a senior engineer there. The native New Orleanian is trying to do anything he can think
of from Washington D.C. that will help his  parents, five siblings,
friends and the extended, now far-flung New Orleans community.  Some
excerpts from our exchange:

Staci,

Please help, if you can. … Communication is direly needed for evacuees as well as emergency
personnel and they could tie it to their maps, with flood levels, body
counts, trapped individuals etc.  If there’s anyway you can help
everyone from NO would be most grateful. The best websites are extremely limited: nola.com and  wwltv.com. Thousands of us can’t locate relatives, friends, basic information
on our homes, etc.  The "504" exchange is all but dead, as is Biloxi
and now Baton Rouge’s.  Anything that Google could provide would be
helpful.  More than just the news link they currently provide.

My family (4 of 5 siblings accounted
for) and my folks are spread out across several states, in hotels and
friends houses.  Though most had "504" cell phone exchanges,
they’re all but unusable.  Several don’t even have electricity. People have started using Craigslist.com
to post lost & found for family members.  People are giving out
their addresses, telephone numbers, anything in hopes others will find
them.  New Orleans has always been impoverished and many families are
close-knit, never moved away from home … so once evacuated will have no
where to go where they’ll know people.

Each of the neighborhoods in NO is distinct, at varying levels of
height relative to sea-level.  Most people identify with their
neighborhoods.  Having maps they could click on to exchange
information would be an incredible gift, wonderfully intuitive and
would also help link up lost people to possible neighbors, friends and
family members.  Many of the more informative blogs are just
thousands and thousands of messages that are organized by Parishes. …
My sister and I, with access to cell phones and email and web and
cable TV having been coordinating communications through numerous
friends and family members and work colleagues… but it’s extremely
primitive."

Taking Philip’s idea beyond Google
alone, what if the sites making a push in  local search applied some of
those resources to New Orleans and other ares battered by the
hurricane? Instead of pointing to restaurants and business that no
longer exist, provide zip-code information centers incorporating data,
maps and photos from FEMA, the Corps of Engineers and other resources.
Create spaces for people to meet online — and publicize it. Create an
uber-directory that pulls it all — volunteer efforts and professional — in one place. Work together to span
sites and portals.

Being local is easy when it’s about the best place for dinner. Helping communities recover from disaster, now there’s a test.

Related: Hurricane Katrina: Grasping the Concept
Hurricane Katrina: Managing The Information Flow

            

I spent two months-plus covering the Mississippi River Flood of 1993 — boating across the baseball diamond in Davenport, surveying damage from a Coast Guard helicopter, sitting in tents talking to evacuees, accompanying people through the ruins of their homes. I was standing on a sandbag levee still being fortified when it started to give and got away just before it blew with a burst of sound and rush of water. I thought I knew what a flood could do.

I grew up knowing my hometown of Memphis was at risk and I wondered
back in 1993, as we watched water creep up the Arch grounds,  what
would happen if any of the levees protecting St. Louis was breached.  Listening, watching and reading about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, though, I realize that 2003 was only a taste compared to what can happen when a hurricane brings flooding in its wake. At the same time, I see my worst fears of urban flooding being played out — all while I sit in a dry, comfortable house in suburban St. Louis.

And I wonder how many people across the U.S. who responded so swiftly to the awful tsunami in SE Asia last December realize the scope of the devastation. I just got off the phone with someone who felt compelled to act then but hasn’t come close to grasping the gravity of what is happening now in our own backyard.

Dozens of people, possibly hundreds, are dead. Hundreds of thousands are without homes for now and into the foreseeable future. Communities are gone. A city that  withstood wars is losing battle after battle with nature; it will be years before anything approaching a real recovery can take place. As I write, New Orleans — a city most of us only know when life is pouring into the streets — is being completely evacuated because it is no longer livable. 

An unknown number of lives are not the same and never will be.

Hurricane Katrina: What can we do?

Hurricane Katrina: Managing The Information Flow