How to step up in the face of disaster

After a natural disaster strikes, there’s only a tiny window of opportunity to rally effective recovery efforts before the world turns their attention elsewhere. Who should be in charge? When a freak tornado hit their hometown, sisters Caitria and Morgan O’Neill -- just 20 and 24 at the time -- took the reins and are now teaching others how to do the same. (Filmed at TEDxBoston.)

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

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

taking the roofs off of homes ...

Caitria O'Neill: That was me

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

After an EF3 tornado ripped
straight through our town

and took parts of our roof off,

I decided to stay in Massachusetts,

instead of pursuing the master's program

I had moved my boxes
home that afternoon for.

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

but on June 3, we started faking it.

This experience changed our lives,

and now we're trying
to change the experience.

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

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

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

Trees were thrown against the house,
the windows exploded.

When we finally got out the back door,

transformers were burning in the street.

MO: I was here in Boston.

I'm a PhD student at MIT,

and I happen to study atmospheric science.

Actually, it gets weirder --

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

playing with the tornado display --

(Laughter)

so I missed her call.

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

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

I drove home late that night
with batteries and ice.

We live across the street
from a historic church

that had lost its very
iconic steeple in the storm.

It had become a community
gathering place overnight.

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

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

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

but when we arrived, we found problems.

There were a couple large,
sweaty men with chainsaws

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

because no one knew the extent
of the damage yet.

As we watched, they became
frustrated and left

to go find somebody to help on their own.

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

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

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

we built a recovery machine.

(Applause)

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

to drop things off and volunteer.

MO: Everyone's donating clothing.

We should inventory
the donations piling up here.

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

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

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

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

We need to canvas and send out volunteers.

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

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

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

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

Together: Someone get me Post-its!

(Laughter)

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

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

CO: My car is in my living room!

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

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

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

while we repair properties.

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

and now I'm covered in poison ivy.

(Laughter)

So this is what filled our days.

We had to learn
how to answer questions quickly

and to solve problems in a minute or less;

otherwise, something
more urgent would come up,

and it wouldn't get done.

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

or the emergency management
director or the United Way.

We just started answering questions
and making decisions

because someone -- anyone -- had to.

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

I'm good at Facebook.

And there's two of me.

(Laughter)

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

you, or somebody like you,

are going to step up
and start organizing things.

The other point is that it is hard.

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

Caitria and I would empty our pockets

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

all bits of information
that had to be remembered and matched

in order to help someone.

After another day
and a shower at the shelter,

we realized it shouldn't be this hard.

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

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

Systems like the ones
that we were creating on the fly

could exist ahead of time.

And if some community member
is in this organizing position

in every area after every disaster,

these tools should exist.

MO: So, we decided to build them:

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

by any local organizer.

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

and to work full-time to make this happen.

In the course of the past year,

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

And there are three main problems
that we've observed

with the way things work currently.

MO: The tools.

Large aid organizations are exceptional
at bringing massive resources to bear

after a disaster,

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

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

thousands of donations,

and all with no training and no tools.

So they use Post-its or Excel or Facebook.

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

amidst all of the photos and well-wishes.

CO: The timing.

Disaster relief is essentially
a backwards political campaign.

In a political campaign,
you start with no interest

and no capacity to turn that into action.

You build both gradually,

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

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

and none of the capacity.

And you've only got about seven days

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

to help your area.

Then some sporting event happens,

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

to meet the next five years
of recovery needs.

This is the slide for Katrina.

This is the curve for Joplin.

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

where we deployed software.

There's a gap here.

Affected households have to wait
for the insurance adjuster to visit

before they can start accepting help
on their properties.

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

MO: Data.

Data is inherently unsexy,

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

FEMA and the state will pay
85 percent of the cost

of a federally-declared disaster,

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

Now that expense can be huge,

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

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

But who knows that?

Now try to imagine
the sinking feeling you get

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

CO: These are three problems
with a common solution.

If we can get the right tools
at the right time

to the people who will inevitably step up

and start putting
their communities back together,

we can create new standards
in disaster recovery.

MO: We needed canvasing tools,
donations databasing,

needs reporting, remote volunteer access,

all in an easy-to-use website.

CO: And we needed help.

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

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

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

setting up software, training residents

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

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

this past April.

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

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

and we launched our platform.

All of the interest came
in the first four days,

but by the time they lost the news cycle,

that's when the needs came in,

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

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

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

Emergency preparedness is a big deal
in disaster recovery

because it makes towns safer
and more resilient.

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

before a disaster.

So that's what we're working on.

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

so people know how to use it

and so it can be filled ahead of time

with that micro-information
that drives recovery.

MO: It's not rocket science.

These tools are obvious
and people want them.

In our hometown,
we trained a half-dozen residents

to run these Web tools on their own,

because Caitria and I
live here, in Boston.

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

There are over three volunteer groups
working almost every day,

and have been since June 1 of last year,

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

They have hotlines
and spreadsheets and data.

CO: And that makes a difference.

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

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

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

Because it doesn't take Harvard or MIT

to fly in and fix problems
after a disaster;

it takes a local.

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

they eventually have to go home.

But if you give locals the tools,

if you show them
what they can do to recover,

they become experts.

(Applause)

MO: All right. Let's go.

(Applause)