On the 12th of March, one day after the tragic earthquake and tsunami devastated Japan Ichi - Hiroyasu Ichikawa - the NetSquared Local organizer from Tokyo sent an e-mail to our NetSquared Local Organizer listserve asking for the best practices for mobilizing online communities in the time of a disaster. In the weeks that have followed, Ichi’s e-mail provoked a series of responses from all over the world. In this post, we hope to voice many of the tools, resources, and tactics that have been shared, in hopes of encouraging others around the world to get involved with the digital relief efforts.

In two recent earthquake relief deployments to Haiti, HELP provided solar powered satellite communications and situational awareness for search and rescue teams, mobile medical clinics, emergency telemedicine, and for other non-governmental relief agency response.

In some ways, the impact of the recent earthquake in Chile wasn't as immediately obvious as that of the earthquake in Haiti. President Michelle Bachelet initially refused foreign aid, but as the death toll has grown, the need for an international response has become obvious. This week, the American Red Cross increased its original response pledge to a quarter of a million dollars.

It’s no coincidence that 2012 (the latest in a long line of disaster movies from director Roland Emmerich)  is timed to release during one of the worst weather months North Americans experience. Yep, November is storm season, bringing with it power outages, floods, snow, wind – and that’s only on the west coast. We’ve written a bit about crowd-sourcing disaster information before, but now seems like the perfect time to get back into disaster preparedness. (More...)

SurePower Flash Presentation November 20, 2008

Click on the link to the SWF  presentation on the SurePower concept

http://gcmcknight.webng.com/Surepower/

Please Note:  This is an audio soundslide. Please  turn up the volume

This is the story of a 1 year 2 month old boy born to an 18 year old mother on the island of Mindanao in the Philippines. This report/plea for assistance came in recently from a Philippine Physician at one of the remote rural clinics HELP visited during "Needs Assessment" operations recently.

Learn how you can help at the end of this story.

Could assetmap.org/uganda be used as a transition tool for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs? 

While the United Nations is routinely assailed for bureaucratic clunkiness, inefficiency, or even corruption, its important to recognize the absolutely vital role that its offices play in "complex man-made emergencies" (also known as "wars") and natural disaster relief.

Payson, AZ 12/10/07 - HELP (www.disasterlogistics.org) is pleased to announce that it is a recipient of a 2007 Award of Excellence in the mobile media ca

HELP's much anticipated mobile telemedicine clinic known as "Doc-in-a-Box" was unveiled during Operations "Golden Phoenix" and "Freedom's Ring" recently.

The joint military and civilian disaster exercises were conducted in California and Arizona. The exercise simulated a massive 8.0 earthquake in the Los Angeles basin area. If such an earthquake were to hit massive numbers of people would be expected to evacuate into Arizona.

Holly Ross' post on the NTEN Blog, Community Tweets in the SoCal Fires, gives you links to individuals and organizations reporting news from the fires on blogs and Twitter.

This Flickr photo, Red Sky by Morning, San Diegans Take Warning, was taken by SL Working2 . You can see more photos of the fires in the San Diego, San Diego Fire and Southern California Fires - 2007 Flickr Pools.

Update: A Google Map of the fire is also available.