Long Day

That pretty much sums it up. I left San Antonio at 7 AM this morning with Claudia (P15 Project Coordinator) and Kelly team members Matthew (I go by Matt to avoid confusion) and Leon for Biloxi, Mississippi. The drive was about 600 miles, during which time I saw most of Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi - we’re basically on the Alabama border. I was first impressed with how non-desert-like Texas really is. Most of what I saw looked very similar to driving down I-5 in Oregon if you would just drop some mountains on the horizon. Instead of, you know, nothing.

After crossing over into Louisiana, the damage became almost immediately apparent. Billboards were thrashed to pieces, and in some cases the giant metal pipes which hold them up SNAPPED (not bent, snapped). Road signs were pretty much non-existent, and there were quite a few abandoned (destroyed) cars on the side of the road. Buildings didn’t do so well either. We saw a lot of roofs missing, trees cutting houses in half, some collapsed structures. Your basic hurricane damage. It looks pretty much exactly like they show on TV. I’m sorry that I don’t have any pictures, but the other thing I learned is that you drive FAST down here. I just didn’t have time to snap anything. The other huge thing was the tree damage. These suckers were just snapped in half. We passed HUNDREDS of wood chipper trucks in long caravans. My guess is they were all busy clearing the roads, which weren’t actually that bad. The only other thing I’m going to say about the drive is that technology abounded. We had the four of us along with Claudia and my gear packed into a Toyota Camry. It was tight. We each had our cell phones going at all times. Matthew and I had our headsets on. Leon hooked up his GPS receiver to my laptop so we could map our location. We also had a pretty good power inverter keeping our gear juiced up.

I’m most proud of how my little cell phone did hooked up with the data cable to my laptop. While traveling 80 MPH down a highway in partially ravaged territory, I was able to connect to the Sprint network at 230 kbps. Not half bad in my book. This allowed me to keep up on email and check stuff out on Google Maps. About halfway through Louisiana, we decided we needed badges in case we came into contact with any law enforcement personnel. So Matthew downloaded the P15 Disaster Relief Division logo and Leon took all our pictures with his cell phone. He Bluetooth-ed them over to my laptop where I pasted them into pre-made badges. We found the LAST Kinko’s in Louisiana on Google Maps, then looked it up on the GPS map. All while cruising down the highway. Got there 30 minutes before closing, and left with spiffy badges. Neat.

So what’s going on here? Well, maybe I should start with a little more information on what happened at Kelly, or at least the way I see it. In my mind, Kelly was a media prize. Everyone wanted a piece of it. Companies who wanted to be "part of" the relief effort but didn’t have anything relevant to offer the damaged areas wanted the PR from a site like Kelly. You don’t have to go anywhere dangerous, it’s dry and stable, and there’s plenty of power and air conditioning. But they "helped." Just about every large tech company showed up on their doorstep, and while were were busy planning and getting approval, some muscled their way in and did the job. It’s unfortunate that it went down that way, but I think in the end it’s probably better. Those people (it ended up being down to 6,000 or so) got connected. And everyone here is far more suited professionally to working out here in the "wild" than at that installation. Like I mentioned yesterday, we all really wanted to go here, and Kelly was seen as a starting point.

Now we’ve just fast-forwarded to being here. And now that we ARE here.....we don’t have a lot of information at this point. We got here at 7:30 PM, and there’s an 8:00 curfew to help curb looting. We met up with Joe who runs a local WISP (Wireless Internet Service Provider - you guys better learn that one). He’s been trying to tackle connectivity on his own, and, needless to say, he’s overwhelmed. Two members of our team aren’t here yet. They were in a bucket truck which can’t go faster than 50 MPH, so they won’t arrive until tomorrow. Also, if you’ve read the "About" section, you heard me reference the "Cowboy Team" who’s been out here since the beginning getting stuff done. As of today, they had TWO camps left in Louisiana to hookup, then they’re headed down here to join us. 20-odd of them. So we’ll have a pretty large and solid team. This area.....is a mess. If you look on a map, it’s pretty far south, right near the Gulf. So it just got THRASHED by the storm. I can’t really describe the damage at this time because it was dark, but I’ll let you know (hopefully with pictures) tomorrow. Many people are displaced, and living at either official shelters, schools, churches, or really anywhere else they can get. Cell service is spotty, at best. Some people have power/phone, others don’t. There’s no cable, and not many have Internet. The guy we met up with here has his house under water. It’s just not cool.

So AT THIS TIME, the first priority is to ensure that the local officials have all the connectivity they need. We want to make sure we’re doing everything we can to help them get a handle on the situation. After that, just like before, we’re going to roll networks out to shelters, schools, churches - pretty much any place that’s housing people. We’re going to try to get computers in there too, maybe some phones, depending. In a lot of ways it’s the same plan as at Kelly, just over a MUCH LARGER geographic area. But I’ll know more tomorrow.

My role in this project? Josh (the Team Chief from Kelly) couldn’t make it out here, and I’ve sort of assumed his role. I spoke with Claudia about it this evening, and she asked me to continue serving in this way. I’m not really hot on the "Team Chief" title. I really see it more as "Site Architect" or something like that. Chief Architect maybe. I guess the way I look at it is these people are experts in each of their respective fields. I know a little bit about everything, and I have the organizational abilities. I’m going to have key people lead each area, but I’m not going to be "ordering" anyone. I think we’ve made a few wrong turns in the past doing things this way. I’m going to collect the coordinates tomorrow morning of all the towers we have access to and what sites need immediate coverage and get them on a map. We’ll pay a visit to each one and see what’s up. Once I have a working knowledge of the area, I’ll get the network guy together and we’ll study the maps and figure out how to get things done. I see my job really being to find out what each of these sites need, and direct our teams in such a way as to meet their needs. A lot of what’s been hurting P15’s efforts thus far has been a very hierarchal way of thinking about things. We DO need management for a team this size working in such a sensitive area, but I think we’ve been over-managed. There has ALSO been a SEVERE lack of information from the management realm to those actually doing the work. In some cases it feels like they’ve actually been straight up withholding. That’s not ok in my book, and I plan to run things a little differently. We have a lot of issues to address over the next two or so days before I can report that I know what’s going on. I’m excited to get started though. In talking about it with the guys here, we’re pretty excited to hit this thing full speed. I’ll be sure to let ya’ll know how things unfold over the next couple of days.

Oh, I almost forgot: our accommodations. We had a connection here to a family which is loaning us their house. It’s pretty big - something like 5 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. They fared pretty well in the storm. A tree crashed through the roof in one room only, but the rest of the house is fine. They have power, water (though it’s not safe to drink it), air conditioning, food, phone, and Internet (DSL). They’ve been incredibly kind to us offering pretty much everything they have. We’re going to have someone cooking and they have laundry facilities (though I don’t know where 20 more people are going to go). Right now, Matthew, Leon, and I are out in a RV on their front lawn. Basically a brand new one. I took the loft above the cab, and have PLENTY of room to spread all my stuff out. It’s like a little office. We have refrigeration, a bathroom, stove, microwave, power, and air conditioning. We’re running on the generator right now, but they hope to have the power fixed in the morning. It’s a pretty sweet setup - I’ll take pictures if I have the time. I should go to sleep now. It’s just after 1 AM local time, and I need to adjust. Hopefully I’ll have more information tomorrow.

- Matt (currently in: Biloxi, MI)