Prepping for Ike

[Andy Carvin]

I know it's a little absurd asking this as Hanna is dumping torrential rains on my house, but I wanted to make sure everyone is paying attention to Hurricane Ike. Ike was supposed to head to Miami, but now it looks like it's gonna flank Florida to the left and make a beeline to the Gulf Coast.

The last thing the Gulf Coast needs is a hurricane potentially bigger than Gustav, but we have some time to prep for it. It probably won't affect the Gulf Coast until the end of next week, and we've already built out a number of resources for the region because of Gustav.

So I wanted to create a discussion about what we can do better to improve upon the content we pulled together for Gustav (and Hanna). Is there anything we should do differently for Ike? Anything we should keep exactly the same? Do any of our teams need more volunteers to do their jobs? Do we need new teams to form around certain projects?

I know this has been tiring for all of us, but hopefully the work we've done so far will make it a lot easier to proceed. Thanks again for all of your hard work. -andy

[Earl McGehee]

You're right - looks like Hanna did not inspire many people to evacuate.

The Map Team page To Do's reflect Ike as the top priority and there is a new Ike dedicated maps page.

I still have some work to do with links and categories - trying to make it easier for users to find the maps. For example there is a link to the evacuation shelters map on the shelters wiki page.

[Nancy Babyak]

how can we pull maps and shelter pages together so that information only has to be entered once?

[B.K. DeLong]

Maybe get everyone in a Jabber/IM/IRC chat that is working on it and work on a standard for doing so....put it on the wiki and then go from there? I found that lack of coordination and a standard manual/guide with instructions up front led to a lot of confusion and people doing their own thing.

Nancy Babyak said:

how can we pull maps and shelter pages together so that information only has to be entered once?

[Andy Carvin]

The maps team is way ahead of everyone and already has base maps for Hanna, Ike and Josephine ready to go. I was under the impression that the wiki had already been reorganized to do the things Nancy suggested. Maybe John and Deanna can weigh in.

The problem with IRC is not everyone knows how to use it and people are working at different hours. We need to be using a more asynchronous mechanism. I'm fine with using email lists but they need to be listed prominently on the site and used for very specific tasks and not strategic discussions.


B.K. DeLong said:

Maybe get everyone in a Jabber/IM/IRC chat that is working on it and work on a standard for doing so....put it on the wiki and then go from there? I found that lack of coordination and a standard manual/guide with instructions up front led to a lot of confusion and people doing their own thing.

Nancy Babyak said:

how can we pull maps and shelter pages together so that information only has to be entered once?

[Nancy White]

On a different project, we keep open a skype chat. If you are offline, you see the messages later. It is working really well. We are a team of about 6, so I'm not sure how it would scale to this larger group. But the persistence of the chat and ease of use is great. The downside is someone has to add people in once their skype username is know. Maybe there is an easier way, but I haven't sussed it out yet.

[B.K. DeLong]

Agreed....what about an IM Chat room or something Web and Java based? I think logged chat is a good way to go and we could find people to setup such a chat that has a Web interface.

[Brad Banner]

The evacuation routes will be the same. The helplines should be the same. The shelters will probably be the same. Each state does shelter co-ordination differently it seems.

In Texas (this is stuff I've learned from reading numerous state and local documents online), just before evacuation, governments and media outlets in the storm affected areas are notiified. Along the evac routes there are large LED signs telling people where to go. Shelters are usually not announced beforehand, but reception centers in shelter hub cities usually are announced to storm affected area media outlets and governments. There is not a lot of lead time. I assume the reception centers will stay the same unless the shelter hub cities found out that the center didn't work well during Gustav.

Overall, I think we can re-ususe much of the data we used for Gustav as far as shelters until we find out different. Government resources and news outlets will stay the same of course.

We might also start looking at Mexico and Central America. Ivan may come straight across the Gulf to there.

[Blogs2c.com]

I think you can now do group chats with Gtalk. But you need a Google login.

http://googletalk.blogspot.com/2007/06/group-chat-for-google-talk-g...

--Brian

B.K. DeLong said:

Agreed....what about an IM Chat room or something Web and Java based? I think logged chat is a good way to go and we could find people to setup such a chat that has a Web interface.

[Ben Tremblay]

Here are the 2 sites I'm using to track Ike at the moment:
* hurricane.accuweather.com
* weather.myfoxtampabay.com

Data: Hurricane IKE Location: 21.9 N 68.8 W; Winds: 110 MPH; Movement: WSW @ 16 MPH
* Public Advisory Number 22A
* ForecastAdvisory Number 22.

[Lisa Votino-Tarrant]

I've been a little out of the loop and Hanna is upon us now. What can I help with?

[John Walling]

I started a Wiki project manual here:
http://hurricanewiki.org/wiki/Wiki_project_manual
Wiki team members are invited to contribute topics, content and resources.
Put issues on the discussion page.
Wiki administrators (Andy and Deanna) need to sign-off on each section for continuity.
JW

B.K. DeLong said:

I found that lack of coordination and a standard manual/guide with instructions up front led to a lot of confusion and people doing their own thing.

[Nancy Babyak]

Agreed, but with Jo hot on Ikes Heels places may start to take Alabama's approach.... they announced that they would open different shelters for Hanna if they were needed because different places were hit and that way services from different states / regions / agencies could concentrate on a fewer # of shelters.

The Wiki now has categories and if those feed directly into a specific map that's great... just need to know the syntax for the entry so it goes in the right direction.

Brad Banner said:

The evacuation routes will be the same. The helplines should be the same. The shelters will probably be the same. Each state does shelter co-ordination differently it seems.

I