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I Downloaded an App. Suddenly, I was a Rescue Dispatcher. (houstonchronicle.com)
Holly Hartman, a journalism teacher for 22 years, writes an incredible story: After watching nonstop coverage of the hurricane and the incredible rescues that were taking place, I got in bed at 10:30 on Tuesday night. I had been glued to the TV for days. I read an article about the Cajun Navy and the thousands of selfless volunteers who have shown up to this city en masse. The article explained they were using a walkie-talkie-type app called Zello to communicate with each other, locate victims, get directions, etc. I downloaded the app, found the Cajun Navy channel and started listening. I was completely enthralled. Voice after voice after voice coming though my phone in the dark, some asking for help, some saying they were on their way. Most of the transmissions I was hearing when I first tuned in were from Houston, but within 30 minutes or so, calls started coming in from Port Arthur and Orange. Harvey had moved east from Houston and was pummeling East Texas. Call after call from citizens saying they were trapped in their houses and needed boat rescue. None of the volunteer rescuers had made it to that area from Houston, but as soon as the calls started coming in, they were moving out, driving as fast as they could into the middle of Harvey.
Well for one, those in Houston were explicitly told 'don't evacuate', basically telling people by trying, they put themselves at risk of being stuck in their car on the road which is more dangerous than their house. In fact that is precisely what did happen in Texas before, more people died trying to evacuate than probably would have died by sitting in place.
Now one could easily say the answer would have been to do proper evacuation planning rather than giving up on evacuation altogether, but that's the government's failing and there's a lot of folks who were doing precisely what they were being told and for somewhat valid reasons.
Rescues *during* the storm are one thing in terms of risk, but by and large we are talking about post-storm rescues in the wake of the flooding. These activities were certainly challenging, contending with hazards and strong currents, but not particularly life threatening given the proper precautions all boaters should know.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
To a great extent this is why ham radio is still around. I applaud folks good intentions to jump in and help, but counting on cell towers to stay up is courting a bigger disaster. There will be storms/earthquakes, etc that will take down the cell towers, the fiber that connects it, the electricity the supports it,and the diesel supply chain that keeps back-up generators running. Ham radio frequencies can reach hundreds and even thousands of miles to areas outside of an impacted area and are often the only line of communication in a disaster. We also need to enable the FM receivers that are built into modern cell to support broadcast of "critical, need to know information."