Situation Report

For the duration of Sandy Humanity Road volunteers were monitoring and supporting emerging events and urgent needs and relaying key information on evacuations. Humanity Road leadership team also joined FEMA’s Innovation Team to provide updated community engagement information.  During Sandy and the Nor’easter, Humanity Road formally activated for

• Fri Oct 26 Dominican Republic – facilitated flood rescue with Dominican Navy
• Tues Oct 30: NYVOST for Social Media monitoring for Suffolk County NY   
• Thu Nov1 Maryland State Emergency Management for Crisismapping
• Sun Nov 4 St. Francis Church & School, Belle Harbor Rockaway - deploy a physical communications Command Center for Monsignor Brown

 Below is a brief sitrep and highlights on each deployment.    

Dominican Republic – Flood Rescue – Friday October 26, 2012
Humanity Road self-activated for Hurricane Sandy on Wednesday October 24^th monitoring social media streams during the inbound storm for urgent needs.  High social media traffic was monitored on Friday October 26th when the storm hit Haiti and the Dominican Republic with winds, surge and large quantities of rain.  On Friday October 26^th we were activated to assist people stranded in the Dominican Republic amid rising waters.  Trapped in their homes by sudden rising water, they could not reach local emergency services and needed rescue.  Cat Graham and Christoph Dennenmoser worked together to notify the Dominican Republic Navy Search and Rescue team who dispatched a ship for rescue.  On Monday October 29^th we received confirmation that the 12 people in the home were rescued as well as additional unconfirmed 70+ people in the community. 

Crisismapping – Tweak the Tweet  - Saturday Oct 27, 2012
Over the weekend of October 27^th and 28^th , our efforts turned to sending preparedness information to the public in the path and monitoring for urgent needs.  Throughout the weekend volunteers supported the Tweak the Tweet map launched by Kate Starbird and tested the prototype tweet aggregation tool code named TAP for the project we are working on for the Office of Naval Research SBIR initiative.  Based on the prototype tool,  Social Media volumes surged on Sunday afternoon and Monday to more than 30,000 tweets per hour as the storm struck New Jersey and New York.  Photos and reports of damage were processed into the Tweak the Tweet map by Humanity Road volunteers.

@NYVOST in support of Suffolk County, NY – SMEM Surge Support, October 30, 2012
We contacted @NYVOST – and offered surge support, @NYVOST activated Humanity Road to help amplify their official messages in social media and provide surge support as needed. The NYVOST team supports Suffolk County Fire and Rescue Services, NY on Long Island which was heavily impacted .  Humanity Road volunteers assisted with surge support reading, amplifying social media messages.

Maryland State Emergency Management – Crisismapping – November 1, 2012
@MDEMA launched a crowdmap to beta test social media situational awareness- Maryland State Emergency Management –activated Humanity Road to assist them with their crisis mapping effort and to help amplify their message. Our priority areas for Maryland were Garret County on the western border and the far eastern shore areas.  Cat led this portion of our response and created a spontaneous volunteer signup sheet to recruit volunteers for Media Monitoring impacts in Maryland. 

St. Francis De Sales Church and School Rockaways/Belle Harbor –
Community Crisis Communications Command Center , Nov 4-10, 2012
219 Beach 129th Street, Rockaway, NY
This community has spirit, resilience and a strong leader in Monsignor Brown, who runs Saint Francis de Sales Church and School in Belle Harbor, New York.  He placed a call for help when the community was devastated by Hurricane Sandy.  As part of the solution team, Alison Thompson (Haiti, Sri Lanka, 9/11) and the Third Wave volunteers reached out to Humanity Road to assist in getting communications and recharging stations in the command center.  The school had no functioning phones, power or heat but it was becoming the community hub for local residents to gather, communicate and serve as a collection point for donation management and feeding.  As of Sunday November 4^th when we arrived, the shelter finder tool indicated that the nearest Red Cross Shelter was 26 miles away, there was no local presence or connection to the Emergency Operation Center (EOC) for the location, no local presence by FEMA, no VOAD, No CERT team operating and no ESF Cluster.  The local community were sheltering in place and spontaneous local volunteer team was doing an outstanding job considering the ground situation. Within 5 minutes of arriving in our rented RV, a resident knocked on the door and asked for first aid treatment for a small head wound.  Within the first hours, we were asked to store insulin in the RV refrigerator as it was the only functioning refrigerator in the area and there was no available ice to be found on the island. The community spirit in this parish is amazing and represents in action what FEMA calls “Whole Community”.  Many of the local community evacuated, however many found themselves in a position where they couldn’t.  These were the firemen, fighting the fires that broke out, the community leadership and a support network to help those found homeless by the hurricane and fires or whose vehicles were destroyed by the salt water surge.    Their efforts have been extraordinary.  The center was run 100% by local and spontaneous volunteers. 

FIXED LOCATION JOAN – COMMUNITY COMMAND CENTER AND RECHARGE AREA

STAGING for the trip:  Cat and I left Virginia on Friday November 2^nd to pick up an RV and outfit it with mobile Internet connectivity.  We staged the RV in West Chester, PA and equipped it with portable power devices, laptops, Verizon MIFI, recharging devices and other general office equipment. Equipment delivered included; a working portable office with 2 printers, 1 copier, 1 scanner, 3 laptops, charging stations, Verizon MIFI hotspot and self-sufficient power supply served by 1 single 12 volt car battery and inverter. Unexpectedly, the RV was used from Sun Nov 4 through Tue Nov 6 to store insulin – as the only functioning refrigerator in the area and served as temporary housing for local leads and a hub for the onsite leads.

After Sandy, the citizens, residents and the community center had no power, lights, heat, no ability to get gas for the community for generators and now a Nor’easter was approaching them with 60mph winds.  Humanity Road was operating on a car battery to supply power to laptops, printers and phone rechargers.

 On November 5th, the room lit up with excitement when Goal Zero and Team Rubicon walked in with portable battery packs and lights as well as a battery driven cold chain (refrigerator) to store medicines that needed to be kept cold.  Team Rubicon strung the lights and we worked with Goal Zero to set up and train volunteers on using the solar power rechargeable batteries. We tapped Haiti Connect to take lead on putting together a wifi solution team in getting wireless Internet access signal into the building due to significant wireless signal communication issues for wireless voice and data with both AT&T and Verizon Wireless networks. Kudos to Evert Bopp for his much needed assistance in facilitating communications solution.  National Guard arrived to provide patrol assistance, as more than 17 miles were without power and vulnerable in the dark during the approaching Nor’easter.   With no functioning fixed telecoms in the command center and no feasible way to evacuate or effectively notify those stranded about the incoming storm.


We requested emergency communications options from the National Guard which they provided and a Hummer with radio commnications stood ready during the night of the storm.   Thank you National Guard!

Humanity Road provided assistance through Saturday November 10^th in co-leading the command center, JOAN – the Joint online access network provided by Humanity Road staged volunteers to help the community response team in organizing and printing public information flyers and volunteer resources to staff their command center.  Monsignor Brown wanted to update his parish and we assisted by uploading a recorded message which they posted to their parish page and Humanity Road shared the video in social media networks. 

MOBILE JOAN
Humanity Road set up in a mobile communications solution for site assessments and assisting the nurses with geo tagging urgent needs while in a car the night after the Flurricane as Alison Thompson and Third Wave Volunteer Nurses visit elderly in high rise buildings.

Photostream can be viewed in Facebook and more will be uploaded to youtube as time permits. 

Cindy Activated the disaster desk notifying Cat of Reports of Wildfire in the NY Long Island area.  1,500 - 2,000 acres estimated to be involved.  Governor reported 90 fire departments were responding to the fire and over 200 homes were without power, some damaged.  Monitored twitter and facebook for impacts, and relayed information from @SuffolkCoFRES @LIRedCross as well as NYalert.gov, some local roads were closed due to the fire.  Released #Wildfire safety tweets from @redcross and coordinated with @NYVOS.  Animals in Disaster team worked an urgent need for horse trailers for evacuation of over 110 horses. Suffolk County Gov reported on their website "A mandatory evacuation is being sought by the Riverhead Police Department for the area north to Grumman Avenue, east to Edwards Avenue, south to Peconic Avenue, and west to Wading River Manor. The Riverhead Senior Center in Riverhead, has been established as an emergency shelter" and Long island power reported over 200 without power.
Long Island Outage map: http://www.lipower.org/stormcenter/outagemap.html
Evacuation  Map - #Suffolk County #NY #Wildfire http://tiny.cc/321icw
Hashtags active: #NYFire #Chestercounty #Ridge #Brushfire #Longisland
Official Guidance: @SuffolkCoFRES @LIRedCross @LIRRScoop @NYVos
Suffolk County Government: http://suffolkcountyny.gov/
Long Island Red Cross: https://www.facebook.com/LIRedCross