Ted Talks (8/1): Caitria and Morgan O’Neill: How to step up in the face of disaster

When a natural disaster hits, everything from daily life to business operations go wild, and saving lives takes top priority above anything else. After lives are saved, everyone must find a way to sustain themselves and/or get their business operations back up and running. Unfortunately, not all lives are saved or business operations are destroyed where vitality is lost and eventually perish. Why? Because the community overall has limited resources and/or customer base.

In this short skit presentation, these Caitria and Morgan O’Neill talked about how they survived a tornado disaster that hit their hometown of Monson, MA. Usually when people have endured a natural disaster such as a tornado, hurricane, or an earthquake, they are scared to death, and mentally devastated. I’m sure Caitria and Morgan were too, yet, with the use of their cell phones and laptops, they took a different route to make things better for their hometown and surrounding areas. They became lead volunteer coordinators to provide a service community power disaster recovery to assist families to recover quicker and return back to their homes. A software application was created to assist communities to receive relief after a natural disaster. This “disaster recovery in a box” offers easy-to-use tools to assist communities to be proactive in structuring volunteers, donations and information needed to put their community back up and running. In addition, it also offers guidelines to prepare every town, county, or state with tools and training before a disaster hits.

This mission started in June 2011 and it led to a powerful organization in which Caitria and Morgan are now running: Community Powered Recovery … Website: www.recovers.org . These sisters not only identified problems that typically arise during a natural disaster recovery, but they were also proactive to solve those problems for their community and other communities as well. As a result, their organization is a huge success today.

The forces I found for this blog are: technical and economical.  The “disaster recovery in a box”  is technical being providing up-to-date information, route the residents and/or business, supplies, and resources to the appropriate locations.  Moreover, residential and/or business information is saved on “cloud” servers, keeping them safe and secure from natural disasters.  The “disaster recovery in a box” is also economical allowing residents and/or businesses to connect with each other, keep track of information, coordinate natural disaster relief efforts to help rebuild the community with ease (Fellowship Technologies, 2012).

References Cited

Recovers.org. (2012). Community powered recovery. Retrieved from https://recovers.org/

Fellowship Technologies. (2012). Technology help churches recover after a natural disaster. Retrieved from http://www.fellowshipone.com/trends/technology-helps-churches-recover-after-a-natural-disaster

Ted Conferences LLC. (2012). Caitria and Morgan
O’Neill: How to step up in the face of disaster. Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/caitria_and_morgan_o_neill_how_to_step_up_in_the_face_of_disaster.html