Red Cross Update: Wilma, Flooding, DAT

[bkdelong]

What a week for Red Crossedness. Yesterday I spent some time there cleaning up the Disaster Action Team (DAT) Ready Room with Luis Matnog, one of the ARCMB's Disaster Services logistics folks. We basically moved a bunch of "Mass Care" boxes of clothing to the basement storage cages.

I found out I can get wireless from that room and was able to do my work from there. Better than working from home as I could help the Red Cross between deliverables, phone calls and emails. I came back today and did the same thing - except I brought my own vaccuum to continue the clean-up. The Ready Room is really a mess - it looks like a decrepit teacher's lounge that hasn't been cleaned in 3 years.

I'm going to go back tomorrow with actual cleaning supplies and do some dusting, put in a trash can, get some contractor bags and bring my portable DVD player to hook up to the TV that no longer gets cable. I'm going to try and take Disaster Assessment I tomorrow night but I hear the class is full.

ARCMB is on major standby for next week. We're predicted to get anywhere from 6-9in of rain on Sunday which will not only bust the dam in Taunton, but probably at least 1 more of the 3 remaining dams, as well as cause some major flooding around the state. And the storm causing it? From the Great Lakes. Not even remotely related to Wilma. So in addition to staffing the Taunton shelter through Tuesday, there's a "Go Team" in the office from 10am-6pm on Sunday to standby for a potential need for up to 12 evacuation center locations - 5 staffers each.

I've chosen to help and hang out with Luis as well as the 3 Americorps VISTA staffers - post Undergraduate students who sign on to help the Red Cross for a year and don't get paid much to do it. They've been incredibly overworked since Katrina it and I have a soft spot for the ickle cute kids.

We had an "All Hands" meeting at the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency tonight. It's a bunker that has a giant blast door and is 40ft below ground. Pretty nifty but I wasn't remotely impressed with the equipment they had. I'm pretty miffed that they don't have as much public information on their Web site as many of the Southern state emergency management sites do. Why be so private?

Comments

[hockeycat.livejournal.com]

Out of curiosity, do you do any work on any DAT teams w/ a Ralph Swick?

[bkdelong.livejournal.com]

Not yet however if it's the Ralph Swick I'm thinking of, I've known him for about 7 years through my work in Web Standards. He's at the W3C and is apparently quite the Amateur Radio guy, which I discovered via Google just now. Never put two and two together. How are you related?

[hockeycat.livejournal.com]

LOL!!!

Yeah, I knew all that already...

How many of his books do you have on your shelf? That's usually the greeting I get...

He's my dad...

Our whole family is into Amateur Radio. Going on, oh, 14? 15? years? Something like that. I got my radio license before I got my driver's license.

I started doing the training for the DAT, but was too busy with school, band, work, etc to continue. He did however (obviously), and is also very involved in the Search & Rescue teams.

Both he & my mother do amateur radio communications for the Boston Marathon, tailing the head medical personnel.

All together now: "It's a small world after all..."

[jessekornblum.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty miffed that they don't have as much public information on their Web site as many of the Southern state emergency management sites do. Why be so private?

Maybe you could update the pages for them? Show them a sample of what you could do for their pages and then ask to do the rest?