Disaster Recovery For Haiti's Cell Phone Networks

spun writes "A disaster recovery team from Trilogy International Partners, LLC was among the first responders to arrive after the quake in Haiti. After seeing to the safety of their staff, they worked quickly to bring up emergency generators and restore service to the devastated country. Winners of a State Department medal for their previous work in Haiti, the company appears to be a model not only for proper disaster recovery response, but also for ethical corporate behavior. Their quick action has no doubt saved thousands of lives, but Haiti still needs our help." Keith Calder, who used to work on Slashdot ad stuff before we had big corporate owners, is now a film producer of last summer's Battle for Terra. They are giving away signed copies of the DVD to the first 100 people who make $25+ red cross donations. It would be cool to see generous Slashdot Sci-Fi fans make a difference. If you are curious or voyeuristic about the devastation, Google Maps has satellite photos.

Comments

Re:Better yet!

[Zedrick]

Yes, much too soon. I enjoy tasteless jokes, but people are still dying over there.

enforcement of engineering code

[fermion]

There are many complaints about government interference in free enterprise, but I think the financial crisis, in which banks loaned money to people with no income with the assumption that they would flip these properties, or cash out the equity as the property appreciated, and therefore the knowledge that the buyers had no stake in the property, and this crisis in Hatia, pretty much shows that one function of government is to develop and enforce proper standards to insure the security of the country.

The reports indicate that Hatia has received significant financial support from the international community in the past. The reports indicate that the government has not used this money wisely, i.e. to develop infrastructure and insure safety. The reports indicate that money existed to make at least some building and some private dwelling safe, but such a thing was never done. We had people paying for modern building that would survive anything but earthquakes. At least the resources should have been put into place to make building that did not immediately kill the occupants. I understand that money was not widely available, and Hatia barely has a government, but I think we can take some lessons on what the minimum responsibility of a government must be from this example.

Re:enforcement of engineering code

[istartedi]

I always think about this during disasters too. Yes, complaining about the permitting process is a favorite sport. When 50,000 die someplace else and fewer than 100 die here in a similar event, then you understand what it's all about. OTOH, how many deaths are caused because people are homeless and/or don't have health care because permitted structures are more expensive? Death due to disaster is easily measured so the permitting process looks like a winner. Deaths due to opportunity cost are more difficult to measure, so we just don't know.

Unfortunately, this is Haiti. The point is moot. They've had a hard enough time keeping a stable government and figuring out how to deal with their limited resources. They should be so lucky someday, to get to the point where they are complaining about the permitting process.

Re:Less ironic than before

[spun]

Much less ironic. This actually was and is a heck of a job. First rate response on our part. I don't want to make this political, though. In some ways, we are better prepared to deal with international emergencies than internal ones. But this type of preparedness and international developmental and emergency aid was a major plank of Obama's platform, so I'm glad to see him actually living up to a promise.

Re:Better yet!

[Jeng]

If the DVD's were going to get tossed, then using them to obtain disaster support sounds like a good use of the resources.

Re:Many Avenues to Help

[edittard]

Getting supplies off the planes, onto some kind of vehicles, and out to refuge camps will take some planning and coordination.

How about mules? Bonus - they're edible!

Thanks for pointing that out

[spun]

I'm sure a lot of people don't realize just how culpable we are in Haiti's misery. We can't change the past, but we can do better in the future.

Re:Pictures from the ground in Haiti...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I'm sure that they'd be more than happy to talk to somebody with the right supplies.

The trouble is, if you ask for in-kind donations, you are liable to get everybody's expired canned fruitcake and the contents of their secondary sock drawer. At best, that requires a lot of sorting. At worst, you have to pay to dispose of somebody else's trash, while they pat themselves on the back. I'm sure that if somebody who actually knows something about what sorts of supplies are useful called up and offered a pallet of them, the answer would be yes.

It's like computers. If you are operating on any scale, ad-hoc donations of everybody's random emachines would be worse than useless. Unless you have massive amounts of free labor, and a lot of time, you'd be stuck in driver hell until the sun burns out. So, you are much better off with cash, which can easily be converted into pallets of identical machines in known shape. This doesn't mean, of course, that you would say no to somebody offering a pallet of identical hardware; but you'd be an idiot to tell the public that they could dump anything old and computer shaped on you and then feel warm and fuzzy about it.

Re:Pictures from the ground in Haiti...

[kent_eh]

1) How do you propose to drive that truck load of food you donated from your location to Haiti? It's an island, y'know.
2) Money is a lot more portable than stuff. It will be used to buy supplies (at wholesale prices and quantities) close to where it's needed.
3) Like it or not, transportation of emergency supplies and volunteers into the disaster area costs money.