Emergencity :: June 2008

John Robb has a good discussion going on how alternative currency (which may be exchangeable with scrip, social currency, complementary currency, community currency and other names) can be used to keep business activity local and thereby increase community resilience to economic shocks.

Robb mentions scrip as an approach to disaster/crisis recovery, while I have been thinking of it as an accelerator for disaster preparedness.  By establishing a redeemable point system for such individual and family preparedness efforts as making a disaster plan, building a kit and ultimately volunteering in an organization such as CERT, Red Cross or United Way, the demographics widen of who actually goes through the process, and data is collected that gives officials a better idea of just how resilient a community actually is.

Here's a nice site with a spiffy web-2.0 logo that combines ad-hoc volunteer needs, materials exchanges and community notices in a simple interface for the 2008 floods in the midwest.  Looks like it is getting at least a dozen requests and offers daily.  Well implemented.

Nice writeup by Josh Catone at ReadWriteWeb...

During last fall's California wildfires, for example, the best source of breaking information was a combination of Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, blogs, and other tools of citizen journalists. As the fires continued to rage out of control, media poured into CNN's i-Report section, which collects user submitted news photos and videos, and the value of citizen journalism became so apparent that the company eventually spun i-Report off as a standalone web site.

From disaster relief and other non-governmental organizations to citizen journalists and the mainstream media, web 2.0 and mobile technology is being used to connect, inform, and mobilize people during disasters.

And iowaflood.com has a nice site up, with social media integration including Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Yahoo Pipes, regionally based categories and links to official news.

Tens of thousands have evacuated, water levels have eclipsed the 500-year flood plain, historic buildings including city hall have been inundated by ten feet of water or more, safe, potable water levels are dropping and the main power plant is threatened. 

DemocraticOz blogs... ""Unprecedented." Iowa Flooding - w/ photos"

"The worst flooding Cedar Rapids has ever seen."  That's how the morning talk show host on 600 WMT-AM just described the devastation.  Make no mistake - this is a flood of epic proportions.  Nothing like this has been seen in Eastern Iowa in recorded history....

The Cedar Rapids Gazette: How to help people in Cedar Rapids

We, admittedly, don't have all the answers yet. But here is some information we can pass along. We will provide more information as it becomes available to us. One idea is to use the 'article comment' feature below to tell people what is needed which can act as a community bulletin.

extensive blogging and photos from The Outdoor Sportsman

The Flood of 2008 has caused and will continue to cause major damage in Cedar Rapids, IA. Here are some Railroad Bridge Collapsed pictures of one of the railroad bridges that had collapsed into the Cedar River. The railroad company had placed railcars full or rocks and boulders on the bridge in hopes that the water would not lift it off of it’s support beams and float away, but the railcars did not work. Mother Nature won the battle with this bridge, but the city of Cedar Rapids is going to win the war!!!!!

From David's Blog: Cedar Rapids, IA: I Can’t Believe I Live Here

So I’m currently home from work today. Routes to Iowa City from Cedar Rapids dwindle. And the flood is now hitting Iowa City hard, roads flood and close by the minute there…and their river isn’t expected to crest until the middle of next week. So I have no desire to go to work and possibly be trapped in Iowa City, which is so bizarre to realize such an event is likely. And all roads are congested as hell. So sitting in my car for 4 hours round trip with 4 dollar gas is a no-go for me.

And in Blencoe, Iowa, Boy Scouts praised as heroes after twister kills 4

Putting their first-aid training to use, they applied tourniquets and gauze to the injured. Some began digging victims from the rubble of a collapsed chimney. And others broke into an equipment shed, seized chainsaws and other tools, and started clearing fallen trees from a road.

Dozens of the Scouts, ages 13 to 18, were hailed for their bravery and resourcefulness Thursday, the morning after a twister flattened their camp in Iowa and killed four boys.

The Red Cross has tremendous reach across the United States, often deploying to dozens of disasters at once.  On a site specifically set up for the Midwest Flooding, they have a current map of disasters they are responding to nationwide.

I've also included the main Red Cross Blog in the new blogroll in the left column of this website.  There's a good article on General Honoré's CNN appearance a couple entries down.

Retired Lt. Gen. Russel L. Honoré is perhaps best known for serving as commander of Joint Task Force Katrina responsible for coordinating military relief efforts for Hurricane Katrina-affected areas across the Gulf Coast.  At the time General Honoré was designated commander, Mayor Ray Nagin said, "Now, I will tell you this -- and I give the president some credit on this -- he sent one John Wayne dude down here that can get some stuff done, and his name is Gen. Honoré. And he came off the doggone chopper, and he started cussing and people started moving. And he's getting some stuff done."

General Honoré, retired from the military after 37 years, is now laser-focused on disaster preparedness for all Americans.  He is making media appearances, putting together projects and forming alliances with the intent that all of us can be better prepared as individuals, as families and as communities.

He has a good overview article on CNN.com, along with a link to a video appearance on CNN.  A short excerpt:

To create this culture of preparedness, we need to focus "left of the disaster," which means we focus on preparations and responses before the disaster. How, or if, each of us survives a disaster is directly related to where we were before it hit.

To create this culture of preparedness, we must change the way that academia, private industry, community groups and individual households think about preparedness in their daily lives. Disaster readiness is the responsibility of every part of our society and every individual.

In our free-market society, the private sector has far more response capability than our government. Governments need to work with private industries and make them part of the plan so we can quickly tap into all of our nation's best resources when we need them most.