there's a large path of destruction here
in town adhere pulling trees from the
ground shattering windows taking the
roofs off 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 air 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 neighborhoods 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 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 fifty 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 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 prior
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 fifty percent 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
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 data basing 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
in 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 town
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 rocket 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 Munson 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
you