0:00:03.461,0:00:05.772
Newscaster: There's a large path of destruction here in town.

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

0:00:08.972,0:00:12.052
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 1st we weren't disaster experts,

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but on June 3rd 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

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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: So I was here in Boston.

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I'm a PhD student at MIT,

0:00:58.977,0:01:01.093
and I happen to study atmospheric science.

0:01:01.093,0:01:02.927
Actually it gets weirder.

0:01:02.927,0:01:06.111
So I was in the museum of science at the time the tornado hit,

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playing with the tornado display.

0:01:08.227,0:01:10.127
So I missed her call.

0:01:10.127,0:01:12.127
So I get the call from Caitria, I hear the news,

0:01:12.127,0:01:13.875
and I start tracking the radar online

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

0:01:17.216,0:01:20.014
And I drove home late that night with batteries and ice.

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We live across the street from an historic church

0:01:22.381,0:01:24.897
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

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went to the church.

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CO: We walked up to the church because we heard that 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,

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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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And 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.

0:01:52.532,0:01:55.679
Why? It had to be done. We found Pastor Bob

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and offered to give the response some infrastructure.

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And then armed with just two laptops and one AirCard,

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we built a recovery machine.

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(Applause)

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CO: That was a tornado,

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and everyone's heading to the church to drop things off and volunteer.

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MO: Everyone's donating clothing.

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We should really inventory the donations that are piling up here.

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CO: Yeah, and we need a hotline. Can you make a Google Voice number?

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MO: Yeah, sure. And we need to tell people what not to bring.

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I'll make a Facebook account. Can you print fliers for the neighborhoods?

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

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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?

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We don't need any more freezers.

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MO: The insurance won't cover it? You need a crew to tar your roof? CO: Six packs of juice boxes arriving in one 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

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that we had answers.

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MO: I can donate three water heaters,

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but someone needs to come pick them up.

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CO: My car is in my living room.

0:02:51.960,0:02:54.941
MO: My boyscout troop would like to rebuild 12 mailboxes.

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CO: The puppy's missing, and insurance just doesn't cover the 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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So this is what filled our days.

0:03:09.932,0:03:12.279
We had to learn how to answer questions quickly

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and to solve problems in about a minute or less,

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because otherwise something more urgent would come up,

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and it just 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

0:03:26.730,0:03:29.230
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 --

0:03:53.396,0:03:56.229
all bits of information that had to be remembered and matched

0:03:56.229,0:03:57.480
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

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where we breathe wi-fi,

0:04:04.612,0:04:08.333
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

0:04:10.864,0:04:12.201
could exist ahead of time.

0:04:12.201,0:04:13.853
And if some community member

0:04:13.853,0:04:18.067
is in this organizing position in every area after every disaster,

0:04:18.067,0:04:20.184
these tools should exist.

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MO: So we decided to build them --

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a recovery in a box,

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something that could be deployed after every disaster

0:04:26.267,0:04:27.892
by any local organizer.

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CO: I decided to stay in the country,

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give up the master's in Moscow

0:04:31.250,0:04:33.517
and to work full-time to make this happen.

0:04:33.517,0:04:35.017
In the course of the past year,

0:04:35.017,0:04:38.500
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

0:04:40.717,0:04:43.608
with the way things work currently.

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MO: The tools. Large aid organizations are exceptional

0:04:46.308,0:04:49.083
at bringing massive resources to bear after a disaster,

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but they often fulfill very specific missions

0:04:51.734,0:04:52.984
and then they leave.

0:04:52.984,0:04:54.984
This leaves local residents to deal

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with the thousands of spontaneous volunteers, thousands of donations,

0:04:58.487,0:05:00.292
and all with no training and no tools.

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So they use Post-its or Excel or Facebook.

0:05:03.192,0:05:06.426
But none of these tools allow you to value high-priority information

0:05:06.426,0:05:09.091
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,

0:05:15.073,0:05:18.741
you start with no interest and no capacity to turn that into action.

0:05:18.741,0:05:20.109
You build both gradually

0:05:20.109,0:05:23.060
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 to capture

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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

0:05:38.674,0:05:42.121
to meet the next five years of recovery needs.

0:05:42.121,0:05:44.309
This is the slide for Katrina.

0:05:44.309,0:05:46.758
This is the curve for Joplin.

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And this is the curve for the Dallas tornadoes in April

0:05:50.317,0:05:51.691
where we deployed software.

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There's a gap here.

0:05:53.107,0:05:56.808
Affected households have to wait for the insurance adjuster to visit

0:05:56.808,0:05:59.208
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 jumpstart an area's recovery.

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FEMA and the state

0:06:10.126,0:06:13.542
will pay 85 percent of the cost of a federally declared disaster,

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

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Now that expense can be huge,

0:06:17.942,0:06:21.876
but if the town can mobilize X amount of volunteers for Y hours,

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the dollar value of that labor used

0:06:24.259,0:06:26.460
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

0:06:30.743,0:06:34.626
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.

0:06:55.964,0:06:57.230
CO: And we needed help.

0:06:57.230,0:07:00.130
Alvin, our software engineer and cofounder, has built these tools.

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Chris and Bill have volunteered their time

0:07:01.814,0:07:04.465
to use operations and partnerships.

0:07:04.465,0:07:07.814
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 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.

0:07:25.430,0:07:27.615
All of the interest came in the first four days,

0:07:27.615,0:07:29.299
but by the time they lost the news cycle,

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that's when the needs came in,

0:07:30.931,0:07:33.996
yet they had this massive resource of what people were able to give

0:07:33.996,0:07:36.148
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.

0:07:38.297,0:07:42.197
Emergency preparedness is a big deal in disaster recovery

0:07:42.197,0:07:44.745
because it makes towns safer and more resilient.

0:07:44.745,0:07:47.212
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.

0:07:51.629,0:07:53.580
We're working on getting the software to places

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so people expect it, so people know how to use it

0:07:55.745,0:07:57.362
and so it can be filled ahead of time

0:07:57.362,0:07:59.980
with that microinformation that drives recovery.

0:07:59.980,0:08:01.482
MO: It's not rocket science.

0:08:01.482,0:08:04.181
These tools are obvious and people want them.

0:08:04.181,0:08:06.530
In our hometown, we trained a half-dozen residents

0:08:06.530,0:08:08.513
to run these Web tools on their own.

0:08:08.513,0:08:10.797
Because Caitria and I live here in Boston.

0:08:10.797,0:08:12.147
They took to it immediately,

0:08:12.147,0:08:13.795
and now they are forces of nature.

0:08:13.795,0:08:16.514
There are over three volunteer groups working almost every day,

0:08:16.514,0:08:18.731
and have been since June 1st of last year,

0:08:18.731,0:08:21.997
to make sure that these residents get what they need and get back in their homes.

0:08:21.997,0:08:24.830
They have hotlines and spreadsheets and data.

0:08:24.830,0:08:26.397
CO: And that makes a difference.

0:08:26.397,0:08:29.147
June 1st this year marked the one-year anniversary

0:08:29.147,0:08:30.696
of the Monson tornado.

0:08:30.696,0:08:33.945
And our community's never been more connected or more empowered.

0:08:33.945,0:08:35.963
We've been able to see the same transformation

0:08:35.963,0:08:38.014
in Texas and in Alabama.

0:08:38.014,0:08:40.180
Because it doesn't take Harvard or MIT

0:08:40.180,0:08:42.579
to fly in and fix problems after a disaster,

0:08:42.579,0:08:43.847
it takes a local.

0:08:43.847,0:08:46.430
No matter how good an aid organization is at what they do,

0:08:46.430,0:08:48.096
they eventually have to go home.

0:08:48.096,0:08:50.079
But if you give locals the tools,

0:08:50.079,0:08:53.212
if you show them what they can do to recover,

0:08:53.212,0:08:56.946
they become experts.

0:08:56.946,0:08:59.528
(Applause) MO: All right. Let's go.

0:08:59.533,0:09:01.645
(Applause)