Drupalcon Attendees Come Together To Build Help4ok.org In 24 Hours

Falc0n writes "Many of us don't have to look too far back to recall the impact of a natural disaster: Sandy, Chelyabinsk, Lushan, and now Oklahoma. When they occur there is typically no shortage of assistance available, but coordination is always a major challenge. In a very open source way, about 60 open source developers, designers, and sys admins came together to build a scalable tool to help those affected by the tornado. If you're interested in helping the effort, join us in irc.freenode.net #drupal4ok"

Comments

With all due respect...

[Type44Q]

With all due respect to these talented, compassionate people, nothing short of anotherfuckingplacetolive.com* is going to cut it.

*I should know; I live here. :p

Re:With all due respect...

[jabuzz]

If you stopped building your homes out of match sticks and built homes that where able to withstand tornadoes (and yes this is perfectly possible) then the clean up would be a *LOT* simpler.

Other sensible measures would be putting electric and telecoms under ground as well.

Re:With all due respect...

[Jesus_666]

Same with housing. Building with concrete or steel is expensive, and will turn your house into an E-Z Bake Oven as well. That would increase electricity needs for running AC, which would lead to more pollution, which would cause more deaths.

You mean building with wood turns your home into an E-Z Bake Oven, right? In Europe we like to build our external walls with an autoclaved aerated concrete core because that stuff is great at thermal insulation. Add some proper (ie. double- or triple-pane) windows with insulated frames and appropriate doors and you get a house that is a lot more resistant to outside temperature than one made out of wood. There is a reason why A/C is much less popular in Europe than in the States: It's simply not as useful if the house stays cool on its own if you lower the blinds and only open the windows briefly to let in fresh air.
Of course AAC isn't as strong as regular concrete and it probably can't be reinforced. Even if you go with normal concrete, though, you should be able to acheive superior insulation and thus less need for A/C during summer by using appropriate doors and windows. And even if the concrete has greater thermal leakage you can always add mineral wool. It's not like thermal insulation is a poorly-understood black art.

Or you could go with a hobbit-style house: Take a dome-shaped concrete shell and put earth on top. Sow grass. Use double- or triple-pane windows as appropriate. As far as I have heard the result is very good at thermal insulation. Concrete dome shells (aka monolithic domes) are quite storm-resistant. Even geodesic domes are fairly good at it. You need to make sure that the local building code allows it, though.

Sure, that's all much more expensive than putting up a few wooden beams, nailing boards across them and calling the result a wall. But then again you have to expect increased power consumption due to A/C and decreased building survivability in case of disaster if you decide that what's cheapest in the short term must be the best possible solution.


In short: Concrete walls aren't hot during summer (not if planned and built properly) and if you decide to build a house that can't withstand a severe storm in an area known to be subject to severe storms it's your own fault if your house collapses.

Re:Capitalism can't cope

[Anonymous Coward]

Weathering a hurricane isn't exactly the same as weathering a tornado, but I suppose they didn't teach that at Kim Il-Song school either.

Re:Self indulgent charity much?

[wonkey_monkey]

volunteers wishing to help in the recovery can coordinate rides to prevent area roads from becoming clogged. The site also helps connect volunteers with homeowners who are willing to house out-of-towners.

Yeah, totally useless.

Re:Capitalism can't cope

[Attila Dimedici]

OK, a person with the handle "For a Free Internet" posts praising a regime that heavily restricts its populations access to the Internet. Make up your mind, do you support totalitarian control over all aspects of people's lives, including what information they can access, or do you support a free Internet? Or by "free Internet" do you really mean someone else pays for your access to the Internet?
I always wonder why these people who praise Cuba so much don't move there.

One effort already

[marcello_dl]

For contribution or inspiration, there is already Sahana - IIRC there was a php version and a rewrite using the very well thought out python framework web2py.

Re:List of ok places to move to

[drinkypoo]

Well for me basically what it came down to was WA or OR. There is still water there. Finding property that comes with any kind of water rights is the fancy trick. I love the land of CA but the politics here are completely wacky. This state is just too big and too heterogeneous to be managed by one government.