usDART.org - the Animal Disaster Response Team Training Institute

Over the last couple of months disaster responders worldwide have seen how Twitter and Facebook have become indispensable tools for communities hit by disasters. Recently, in tornado-hit areas in the USA people quickly put up Facebook pages to post updates, and more importantly ask for help and resources or offer help and resources. Animal organizations and individuals began to post locations of found animals, including pictures. As a result, in many cases animals were re-united with their people without having to go to an emergency animal shelter or to animal control first. For animals in disasters, this is second best only to animals evacuating with their people. In other examples local kennels would offer free boarding to victims of disasters. In other cases regular and emergency shelters would put out requests for food and volunteers. One example of these developments can be found at http://vtirene.crowdmap.com/. For an archived version of the Irene clean up process go to http://irenerecoverymap.com/.

"All disaster response and recovery is local"

It has taken us a while to get there, but the signs are overwhelming: local communities are more disaster resilient and consequently less dependent on outside help than before. Animal related disaster this year have been resolved by locals taking the lead and volunteers from elsewhere coming in to assist them. A wonderful and necessary development. The challenge is how to make sure that local, volunteer-led, disaster response provides the best quality of response possible.

FEMA seems to begin to understand that for disaster response and disaster recovery to be successful it needs to get out of the way of local, community-based (civilian) organizations and become an enabler, a tier two responder (See Policy Challenges in Supporting Community Resilience, see below.) The old mantra of the Incident Command System: "All Disasters Are Local" is being replaced by "All Disaster Response and Recovery Is Local". The emphasis has shifted away from the old cold-war command-and-control philosophy to one where local, community-based groups will play the role that makes or breaks disaster response and disaster recovery.

I  hope that for the rest of the emergency infrastructure (the "uniforms") the realization that they are neither trained nor equipped to effectively deal with all aspects of disasters will also sink in. They, too, need to get out of the way and re-invent themselves as enablers...

What has been lacking, though, is a good vehicle for local people to request and for others (local or elsewhere) to offer help. While Facebook, Twitter and Craig's List are great tools to get the news out quickly, they are not very well organized. Enter crisis mapping as a way to do all of the above. And more.

Crisis Mapping is "Mutual Aid" On Steroids

Crisis mapping (crowd sourcing) is a combination of people and technology. The technologies used by people to request or offer help and resources are familiar to most: texting, tweets, Facebook postings, blog postings etc. Most of us also have experience with Google maps and databases in general. Combined these are powerful tools in the hands of people who know what they do.