Often we (or I) assume people are a "certain way" from the context in which you know them. Nothing floors me more, in a good way, than when my perceptions completely change. Recently I heard an inspirational Hurricane Katrina heroism story from someone I know which did just that. When the hurricane hit, Jono dropped everything and, along with a couple of friends, set out to save people’s lives from thousands of miles away through dedication and clever use of technology.
He told me: "It’s definitely the most important thing I’ve ever done in my life up
to this point (and the thing that came closest to driving me into the
mental ward, post traumatic stress, etc.)."
Here is the story as he tells it. May his creative thinking and heroism inspire you should the occasion arise:
"I’m an Internet Security Analyst from San Francisco. Usually I help
protect people’s computers from bad things on the Internet, never did I
think I would be using the computer and Internet to help protect people
themselves — but that’s exactly what happened during Katrina.
After the flood, myself and two other people began sending reports of people trapped to a chopper pilot in
the 920th Rescue Wing, US Air Force who was flying rescue missions in
New Orleans. We were collecting reports of people trapped from
relatives who were posting the information in various locations on the
Internet (NOLA.com, craigslist.org, etc.).
The relatives
would get calls or cellular text messages from people trapped in New
Orleans and begin attempting to contact the authorities. However,
because the phone lines and communications systems in New Orleans were
so overtaxed or destroyed it was often hard for them to get through.
Also, they were often located in states far away, didn’t know the local
TV stations, etc. so they sometimes wouldn’t know who to call at all.
This caused many of these relatives to post information about their
trapped family member to the Internet — hoping someone could do something.
We began
taking this information and relaying it — first by phone, then by FAX
to the pilot in the 920th. He would provide the reports to his team,
they would confirm the victims location by contacting the relatives
(sometimes we would do this as well, but we wanted to ensure we didn’t
interfere with the authorities or make the relative think they could
stop attempting to report the person trapped). If the chopper pilot had
confirmation the person was still trapped, they would contact the
common Command and Control dispatch, report the location to the
dispatch and fly on it. Carlos Gonzales (the pilot) has many stories of
the Rescue Wing pulling people out of attics which were not visible at
all and hadn’t been extracted by other SAR teams.
One of these people was Clothide Mack, who later was written about in this article:
Widow, 85, waited for rescue but prepared for death
Carlos has many other stories of rescues they conducted using the
information we provided them — in fact, he told me they used the
addresses and GPS coordinates we provided to rescue at least 70 people
from the flood — some in very bad condition.
During this time, I created a website to take
"notes", obtain GPS coordinates, and map the people we were relaying to them. You can see the map and website here.
During this whole experience, I slept about 6 hours in 96 hours and
spent a total of probably 10 days in crisis mode, it was a very
difficult experience — even just being in California and using the
computer to assist — unlike the guys down there actually pulling
people out.
Here are some screen shots of Clothilde plotted on that map (entered a couple hours before she got picked up by Carlos):
http://biggins.networkcommand.com/Clothilde-map.JPG
http://biggins.networkcommand.com/Clothilde-SAT-SHOT-KATRINA.JPG
Here’s a picture of her the day they pulled her out (carlos didn’t put
her in the chopper, but rather had the boat come to the chopper cause
she was in bad shape and not wanting to get winched into the chopper)"
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