Literally millions of us were directly victimized by major hurricanes this year, and fortunately for us, the 2005 hurricane season is virtually over. Most of us saw the national and local media coverage of the storms, with generally excellent coverage by the network and cable news channels, as well as the local radio stations, such as KLVI, and the print media coverage.
What did not garner much media attention are the internet based services that were provided during the hurricanes, and the lessons that we as computer users should have learned from these disasters.
As a subject, or victim as this case may be, of a two week mandatory evacuation from Hurricane Rita, I found the value of the internet during such a crisis. Following a harrowing 20 hour evacuation drive, that would take only five hours in normal circumstances to go the almost 300 miles, I found refuge in my daughter’s college dormitory apartment in Richardson, Texas. After the inevitable nap and shower, I wanted to know explicitly what was going on back home. With much of the region shut down due to the mandatory evacuation decree, any threads of accurate information would be valuable. The national media had not yet started live reporting from my home area in southeast Texas, so other than the dire weather warnings, there was no local news available to this distant evacuee that was of personal interest. Using my daughter’s broadband internet connection, I browsed the southeast Texas media outlets looking for localized information. Due to the impending direct hit by Rita, a hurricane that had fortunately weakened from a catastrophic category 5 while in the Gulf, to a still very dangerous and strong category 3 as it closed in on our coastline, many of the local media outlets were appropriately shutting down, or transferring operations to distant locations.
Initially, my primary source of information from home was the stellar service that radio station KLVI provided by streaming live local information over the internet on a 24/7 basis. ClearChannel, the owner of KLVI and the other four stations housed in the same complex, should be commended on combining the available resources of several of the stations, and making this service available over the internet. All regular programming had been suspended while the skeleton staff of the combined stations stayed behind in miserable conditions to broadcast to whoever could listen locally or over the internet. I do not have any way of knowing how many evacuees like myself kept up with the local situation over the internet by listening to KLVI’s streaming audio as the disaster unfolded, but the internet demonstrated its unique capability of providing valuable local information to distant destinations. To pick up KLVI’s streaming audio required an internet connection, a browser (I used Firefox), and a compatible audio utility, along with a sound card and a speaker. Almost all computers with internet access could pick up and listen to the audio. Hopefully, this service will not be needed in the future, but the inevitabilities of future severe storms or other events may make such services commonplace.
Another area in which the internet demonstrated its value to the general population was the willingness of individuals to create websites or “blogs” where people could communicate and interact with others in an attempt to satisfy our needs for local information. The Examiner newspaper, for example, set up a variety of forums at a temporary location, www.examiningrita.com (this link now redirects to the regular Examiner website). In these forums, localized information was categorized into relevant topic areas, and anyone could post a question or gather information of interest.
An outstanding noncommercial endeavor was started by southeast Texas resident and fellow evacuee Janet Bray. She, along with her group of talented webmasters, very quickly registered the domain name www.hurricaneritasurvivors.com and proceeded to create a first-class informational website where thousands of visitors found a place to exchange extremely localized information. This website was an affiliate of its predecessor service, www.setxhelp.org. Personally, I found the “Forums” section aptly named “Hurricane Rita Survivors Forums” the most helpful and valuable. Ms. Bray’s team of accomplished webmasters and moderators managed thousands of posts in over 1100 topic areas, all of which was created and operating as Hurricane Rita was doing its dirty work on southeast Texas and southwest Louisiana. Information was available on this site about the Red Cross, FEMA, missing pets, insurance claims, photos, availability of necessities, help needed, utility information, school information, and neighborhood conditions down to street and building level. News information, gathered from a variety of sources such as media outlets, was reposted here in appropriate forums as a centralized information source. Hurricaneritasurvivors.com and www.setxhelp.org exemplify the finest that the internet can be in times of crisis and disaster.
Shortly after the storm passed, and as the area suffered from heavy damage and near total power outages, other resources appeared as online resources of local news. TV station KFDM started streaming local news video over the internet, and media outlets started coming to life with online content.
I pray that we will not be forded to repeat the tribulations that many of us went through, but it is sadly inevitable that many of us will. If and when it happens again, the lessons we learned about the internet and its use during disastrous events should help us all cope better with the trials that we may face.
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