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(Video) Newscaster: There's a large path
of destruction here in town.

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... pulling trees from the ground,
shattering windows,

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taking the roofs off of homes ...

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Caitria O'Neill: That was me

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in front of our house in Monson,
Massachusetts last June.

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After an EF3 tornado ripped
straight through our town

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and took parts of our roof off,

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I decided to stay in Massachusetts,

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instead of pursuing the master's program

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I had moved my boxes
home that afternoon for.

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Morgan O'Neill: So, on June 1,
we weren't disaster experts,

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but on June 3, we started faking it.

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This experience changed our lives,

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and now we're trying
to change the experience.

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CO: So, tornadoes
don't happen in Massachusetts,

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and I was cleverly standing in the front
yard when one came over the hill.

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After a lamppost flew by, my family
and I sprinted into the basement.

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Trees were thrown against the house,
the windows exploded.

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When we finally got out the back door,

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transformers were burning in the street.

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MO: I was here in Boston.

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I'm a PhD student at MIT,

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and I happen to study atmospheric science.

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Actually, it gets weirder --

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I was in the museum of science
at the time the tornado hit,

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playing with the tornado display --

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(Laughter)

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so I missed her call.

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I get a call from Caitria, hear the news,
and start tracking the radar online

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to call the family back when another
supercell was forming in their area.

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I drove home late that night
with batteries and ice.

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We live across the street
from a historic church

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that had lost its very
iconic steeple in the storm.

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It had become a community
gathering place overnight.

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The town hall and the police department
had also suffered direct hits,

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and so people wanting to help
or needing information went to the church.

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CO: We walked to the church because
we heard they had hot meals,

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but when we arrived, we found problems.

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There were a couple large,
sweaty men with chainsaws

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standing in the center of the church,
but nobody knew where to send them

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because no one knew the extent
of the damage yet.

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As we watched, they became
frustrated and left

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to go find somebody to help on their own.

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MO: So we started organizing.
Why? It had to be done.

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We found Pastor Bob and offered to give
the response some infrastructure.

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And then, armed with just
two laptops and one air card,

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we built a recovery machine.

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(Applause)

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CO: That was a tornado, and everyone's
heading to the church

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to drop things off and volunteer.

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MO: Everyone's donating clothing.

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We should inventory
the donations piling up here.

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CO: And we need a hotline.
Can you make a Google Voice number?

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MO: Sure. And we need to tell people
what not to bring.

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I'll make a Facebook account.
Can you print flyers?

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CO: Yeah, but we don't even know
what houses are accepting help.

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We need to canvas and send out volunteers.

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MO: We need to tell people
what not to bring.

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Hey, there's a news truck. I'll tell them.

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CO: You got my number off the news?
We don't need more freezers!

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(Together) MO: Insurance won't cover it?
CO: Juice boxes coming in an hour?

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Together: Someone get me Post-its!

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(Laughter)

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CO: And then the rest of the community
figured out that we had answers.

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MO: I can donate three water heaters,
but someone needs to come pick them up.

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CO: My car is in my living room!

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MO: My boyscout troop
would like to rebuild 12 mailboxes.

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CO: My puppy is missing and insurance
doesn't cover chimneys.

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MO: My church group of 50
would like housing and meals for a week

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while we repair properties.

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CO: You sent me to that place
on Washington Street yesterday,

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and now I'm covered in poison ivy.

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(Laughter)

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So this is what filled our days.

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We had to learn
how to answer questions quickly

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and to solve problems in a minute or less;

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otherwise, something
more urgent would come up,

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and it wouldn't get done.

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MO: We didn't get our authority
from the board of selectmen

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or the emergency management
director or the United Way.

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We just started answering questions
and making decisions

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because someone -- anyone -- had to.

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And why not me? I'm a campaign organizer.

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I'm good at Facebook.

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And there's two of me.

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(Laughter)

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CO: The point is, if there's a flood
or a fire or a hurricane,

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you, or somebody like you,

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are going to step up
and start organizing things.

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The other point is that it is hard.

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MO: Lying on the ground
after another 17-hour day,

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Caitria and I would empty our pockets

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and try to place dozens of scraps
of paper into context --

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all bits of information
that had to be remembered and matched

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in order to help someone.

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After another day
and a shower at the shelter,

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we realized it shouldn't be this hard.

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CO: In a country like ours
where we breathe Wi-Fi,

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leveraging technology for a faster
recovery should be a no-brainer.

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Systems like the ones
that we were creating on the fly

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could exist ahead of time.

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And if some community member
is in this organizing position

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in every area after every disaster,

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these tools should exist.

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MO: So, we decided to build them:

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a recovery in a box, something that
could be deployed after every disaster

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by any local organizer.

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CO: I decided to stay in the country,
give up the master's in Moscow

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and to work full-time to make this happen.

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In the course of the past year,

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we've become experts in the field
of community-powered disaster recovery.

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And there are three main problems
that we've observed

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with the way things work currently.

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MO: The tools.

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Large aid organizations are exceptional
at bringing massive resources to bear

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after a disaster,

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but they often fulfill very specific
missions, and then they leave.

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This leaves local residents to deal with
the thousands of spontaneous volunteers,

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thousands of donations,

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and all with no training and no tools.

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So they use Post-its or Excel or Facebook.

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But none of these tools allow you
to value high-priority information

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amidst all of the photos and well-wishes.

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CO: The timing.

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Disaster relief is essentially
a backwards political campaign.

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In a political campaign,
you start with no interest

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and no capacity to turn that into action.

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You build both gradually,

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until a moment of peak mobilization
at the time of the election.

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In a disaster, however,
you start with all of the interest

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and none of the capacity.

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And you've only got about seven days

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to capture 50 percent of all
of the Web searches that will ever be made

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to help your area.

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Then some sporting event happens,

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and you've got only the resources
that you've collected thus far

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to meet the next five years
of recovery needs.

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This is the slide for Katrina.

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This is the curve for Joplin.

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And this is the curve
for the Dallas tornadoes in April,

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where we deployed software.

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There's a gap here.

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Affected households have to wait
for the insurance adjuster to visit

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before they can start accepting help
on their properties.

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And you've only got about four days
of interest in Dallas.

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MO: Data.

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Data is inherently unsexy,

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but it can jump-start an area's recovery.

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FEMA and the state will pay
85 percent of the cost

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of a federally-declared disaster,

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leaving the town to pay
the last 15 percent of the bill.

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Now that expense can be huge,

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but if the town can mobilize X amount
of volunteers for Y hours,

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the dollar value of that labor used
goes toward the town's contribution.

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But who knows that?

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Now try to imagine
the sinking feeling you get

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when you've just sent out 2,000 volunteers
and you can't prove it.

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CO: These are three problems
with a common solution.

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If we can get the right tools
at the right time

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to the people who will inevitably step up

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and start putting
their communities back together,

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we can create new standards
in disaster recovery.

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MO: We needed canvasing tools,
donations databasing,

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needs reporting, remote volunteer access,

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all in an easy-to-use website.

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CO: And we needed help.

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Alvin, our software engineer
and co-founder, has built these tools.

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Chris and Bill have volunteered their time
to use operations and partnerships.

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And we've been flying into disaster areas
since this past January,

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setting up software, training residents

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and licensing the software to areas
that are preparing for disasters.

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MO: One of our first launches
was after the Dallas tornadoes

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this past April.

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We flew into a town
that had a static, outdated website

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and a frenetic Facebook feed,
trying to structure the response,

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and we launched our platform.

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All of the interest came
in the first four days,

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but by the time they lost the news cycle,

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that's when the needs came in,

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yet they had this massive resource
of what people were able to give

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and they've been able to meet
the needs of their residents.

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CO: So it's working,
but it could be better.

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Emergency preparedness is a big deal
in disaster recovery

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because it makes towns safer
and more resilient.

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Imagine if we could have
these systems ready to go in a place

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before a disaster.

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So that's what we're working on.

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We're working on getting the software
to places so people expect it,

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so people know how to use it

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and so it can be filled ahead of time

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with that micro-information
that drives recovery.

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MO: It's not rocket science.

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These tools are obvious
and people want them.

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In our hometown,
we trained a half-dozen residents

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to run these Web tools on their own,

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because Caitria and I
live here, in Boston.

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They took to it immediately,
and now they are forces of nature.

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There are over three volunteer groups
working almost every day,

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and have been since June 1 of last year,

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to make sure these residents get what
they need and get back in their homes.

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They have hotlines
and spreadsheets and data.

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CO: And that makes a difference.

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June 1 this year marked the one-year
anniversary of the Monson tornado,

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and our community's never been
more connected or more empowered.

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We've been able to see the same
transformation in Texas and in Alabama.

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Because it doesn't take Harvard or MIT

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to fly in and fix problems
after a disaster;

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it takes a local.

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No matter how good an aid organization
is at what they do,

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they eventually have to go home.

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But if you give locals the tools,

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if you show them
what they can do to recover,

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they become experts.

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(Applause)

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MO: All right. Let's go.

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(Applause)