Update - September 26, 2005

William Waites, one of our volunteers, has just returned to the Ponchatoula base camp from a 2 day trip back to Bay St. Louis, one of the areas hardest hit by Katrina. William has been scouting locations in the area to establish community media access centres that will allow residents to apply for FEMA and other benefits online as opposed to waiting 7+ hours on hold on the telephone. In addition to assisting in the establishment of the wireless networks we are providing computer training and helping residents, some of whom have never used a computer and/or the internet, complete the necessary benefit forms.

Our team also plans to travel to Lake Charles, another hurricane decimated area, in the upcoming week to assess conditions and needs.

The Hammond Daily Star has published a good article about the work we are doing in and around the Ponchatoula area.

IT volunteers help secure communications

DON ELLZEY

PONCHATOULA -- During the two or three days immediately following Hurricane Katrina, communication was one of the major problems throughout the storm ravaged area, from Tangipahoa Parish to the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

Cell phones did not work, the telephone system was dead and other forms of communication were spotty at best

......

In Ponchatoula, in a the small KD Truck & Trailer Repair building at 298 Tower Road, a group of volunteers with information technology backgrounds have established such a communication system. It is almost impervious to the worst type of disaster, and allows communication with almost any place in the United States, and the world, through the internet.

more....

Update - Ponchatoula

We have begun a project we are calling NOMesh which is a community based wireless network which will provide internet access free of charge to users with a computer and a wireless card. This will be done by setting up dozens of access points around the target neighbourhoods and connecting each to some sort of bandwidth (ranging from home DSL and cable to greater bandwidth connections). The project is being built by Jeff Moe of Colorado (themoes.org), Aleks from Peru who works in Iraq and Jim Patient among others. Pictured is Geoffrey and Mike.





Zev, the warehouse emptying, truck filling cook from Montreal and Kevin, the "head" of the Ponchatoula household, are usually found working very....VERY...hard.

Uniter Article - September 22, 2005

The University of Winnipeg newspaper, The Uniter, has a a great article about the work of our volunteers down south in their September 22, 2005 issue.

Canadian Brothers' Making a Difference in Louisiana

Vivian Belik

To University of Winnipeg student Geoffrey Young, overturned tree stumps, parking lots full of frightened, homeless people and 25-hour days are a far cry from the worries of tuition and overwhelming reading assignments experienced by his fellow classmates back home.

Arriving in Ponchatoula, Louisiana, a small town on the outskirts of New Orleans last Tuesday, Young was faced with the remnants of a once-vibrant area devastated by Hurricane Katrina.

“This place looks like a garbage dump,” said Young as he stared out over somebody's backyard. “This [area] used to be forest-like, but not anymore. And there's glass absolutely everywhere.”

Traveling to the United States with Montrealer William Waites, Young made arrangements for the pair to assist a group of technological experts in Louisiana who are working to provide communication services to victims of the hurricane. On Sept. 13, Young and Waites joined 28 other volunteers in Ponchatoula about 60 km northwest of New Orleans.

The volunteers, most of whom are IT professionals from across the U. S., built themselves a permanent base camp and quickly formed RadioResponse, a wireless crisis centre that seeks to provide relief to the homeless from New Orleans who have been separated from their family and friends.

“Every imaginable communications expert is down here,” said Young.

Combining forces with other communications groups scattered throughout the area, RadioResponse has been working around the clock to provide wireless access to shelters. Their main efforts have gone towards setting up a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) to allow hurricane victims to search for family and friends that may be staying in nearby shelters. Less than two days after the VoIP equipment had been installed, RadioResponse reported that more than 1000 outbound calls had already been placed.

This is good news for hurricane victims who have seen less than satisfying results from their national emergency agency, FEMA.

“People here are very unimpressed [by FEMA's delayed response], that's why there's a bunch of civilians here doing it themselves,” reported Young.

Affectionately referred to as 'our Canadian Brothers,' Young and Waites are much appreciated by the rest of the RadioResponse crew.

“The people I've been working with are just thrilled with [our efforts],” said Young, just days before he and Waites successfully convinced some well-placed individuals in Canada to send a plane-full of hepatitis vaccinations down south.

When asked if he felt that he was out of harm's way, Geoff adamantly replied that “everything is totally under control - we're completely safe.”

Young notes that civil unrest is no longer an issue in New Orleans, due to the police and emergency services that are on the ground, an indication that the images and stories recently being relayed by television stations and newspapers have been over-exaggerated.

“There's been no respect in the media for the people of New Orleans,” said Young.

Aside from providing assistance to RadioResponse, Young is acting as a special correspondent for CKUW's morning news show The Beat, as well as being a representative for the University of Winnipeg's Hurricane Katrina Relief Effort.

In an official news statement released two weeks ago, University of Winnipeg president Lloyd Axworthy announced that the school would like to bring some university students from Louisiana affected by the hurricane to Winnipeg so that they could continue their studies up north. The U of W is ready to waive all tuition fees for students, provide students with counseling services and help make suitable housing arrangements for them.

Canceling all of his courses and leaving his beloved job as news director for The Beat, Young intends to stay in Ponchatoula for several months. The University has supplied Young and Waites with an initial contribution of $500 to aid them in their efforts, but it is an amount that has proven to be insufficient for their purposes.

“We need gas money to get home,” said Young, encouraging those who would like to donate to go to the CKUW offices and make a cheque out to the Canadian Communications Relief Project.

Although Young believes that “there's really no reason a couple of guys from Canada have to come [all the way south to help out with relief efforts],” he considers his stay in Louisiana to be “a really exciting opportunity to prove what people can do when they get together.”

You can follow Geoff Young's progress by tuning into CKUW's The Beat and listening to daily updates, or by checking out RadioResponse.org.

Update - September 24, 2005

Now that Hurricane Rita has passed our team is returning to Bay St. Louis and New Orleans to assess the damage to wireless communications established following Katrina. It appears that Algiers, the New Orleans neighbourhood where Common Ground is based, was left relatively untouched by Rita. We will post further updates soon from our team on the ground.

Check out this link to photos taken at Common Ground Relief Clinic, with whom our volunteers has most recently been working to reestablish communications.

Storm Watch

We sat out Rita in Ponchatoula. There were tornado warnings throughout most of the day. We made kites and got to test fly the StormWatch(tm) brand styrofoam airplane we had. Geoffrey drank some bourbon.


We have gained a meteorologist. Her name is Jen and she lives in Rhode Island. As the bands of Hurricane Rita were going over, she was able to predict weather changes within less than 30 seconds accuracy. The wind would blow the torrential downpour until it fell parallel to the ground. Then all of a sudden it would stop. In the end Geoffrey's hat was ruined, but we were able to keep the network up through most of the storm.

Update - September 22, 2005

A couple days before Hurricane Rita was to hit, we packed up our stuff and evacuated out to Ponchatoula to sit out the storm. We did not feel good about leaving either New Orleans or the Common Ground behind but we just weren't willing to accept the possibility of flash flooding and levee bursts.

Tensions in Algiers the final night were extremely high, largely due to apprehensions caused by disturbances after Katrina hit. Will managed to convince some National Guard to keep a close watch on Common Ground so that they would remain safe after Rita.

Update - September 21, 2005

This is the media centre we helped establish in the house next door to the Common Ground. Inside there are numerous computers, both owned and donated, all hooked up to a wireless modem card. There is also a VoIP phone which allows long distance calling but isn't very clear likely due to the lack of bandwidth. Geoffrey spent several days here helping people fill out FEMA forms and locating loved ones.

As Hurricane Rita was just picking up steam, tensions around the common ground were getting noticeable. Algiers was still pretty much abandoned and curfew was being tightly enforced by both our hosts at Common Ground and the Orleans police. There was one guy who came in about an hour before curfew to fill out his FEMA forms and try and find a loved one. We got through his FEMA forms and were not having any luck finding the guy's sister. At precisely ten to seven, he suddenly jumped out, said "I gotta go its curfew and I gotta get home safe" and suddenly ran out mid way through trying to find members of his separated family.

Update - Common Ground

Maliq Rahim lived in the house that has become the Common Ground community centre. He is seen here talking to some of the soldiers patrolling the area. Aside from tech type work, days at Common Ground were spent unloading trucks of food and supplies which had been brought in from all over the country. Maliq's property was essentially functioning as a free store giving out food, water and other necessities to anybody in the neighbourhood who needed it.

There were about 20 or so volunteers, some of them Canadian, who were helping keep Common Ground going. Among the jobs allotted were covering holes in roofs with tarps, doing check-ins on specific locations within the city, keeping storm drains clear of debris and dead dogs, household duties, clinic support and several other jobs. The Common Ground was also doing initial response and outreach to the Houma Nation in Southern Louisiana. The Houma lost everything in Katrina and it is questionable whether their flooded land can again be viable.



When we first arrived in the Algiers section of New Orleans, this Carnival cruise ship was parked on the levee obscuring part of the skyline. The levee itself was about 800 yards from the Common Ground. It was a small grassy hill with a dirt road at the top beyond which was the Mississippi River.

Update on our progress - September 19, 2005

Our volunteers are lending their communications expertise and assisting a commongroundrelief.org, a locally led and community-run organization offering temporary assistance and mutual aid to the citizens of New Orleans and the surrounding areas. Common Ground's team includes doctors, lawyers, aid workers, community organizers, and volunteers of all stripes and creeds.

In the wake of Katrina Common Ground has been providing emergency services including a community garbage pick-up program; mobile kitchens to provide free hot meals to anyone in the area; a first aid clinic in a local mosque and a mobile first aid station staffed by doctors, nurses and emergency medical technicians; and bicycles for volunteers and residents to transport aid around the area; animal rescue; and has been developing a free school for children. Common Ground also operates a medical clinic and community centres.

Reporters from CNN were on hand today covering the activities of the organization including members of our team helping people fill out FEMA forms online. The San Francisco Chronicle has also written an interesting article describing Common Ground's relief efforts.

Tomorrow evening our volunteers are planning to evacuate the area due to the approach of tropical storm Rita along with others back to the Ponchatoula staging area of the RadioResponse.org team, with whom they have also been working to reestablish communications capacity to affected communities.

New York Times Article - September 18, 2005

The New York Times has written an interesting article about WiFi systems and refers to our work, along with other volunteers including the Wireless Community Networks (WCN) project of the Center for Neighborhood Technology, helping to reestablish communications after Katrina. Here are some excerpts.


Talking in the Dark

By CLIVE THOMPSON
Published: September 18, 2005
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/18/magazine/18idea.html

To understand what makes WiFi useful in a catastrophe, consider some frailties of our regular phone-company communications. Phone systems are reliable on a day-to-day basis, but they have a key vulnerability: They’re centralized. In any city, a handful of central “switches” handle the work of routing local phone calls. During 9/11, several important switches were located across the street from the World Trade Center and were damaged in the towers’ collapse, blacking out parts of New York.

To make matters worse, phone systems are rarely designed to allow more than 10 percent of the population to talk simultaneously, and far more people than that rush to the telephone in an emergency. In the New York City blackout of 2003, while most land lines continued to function, the cellphone circuits were overjammed.

Katrina posed even worse problems. As phone traffic surged, the water was destroying a vast area, including underground phone lines. Mobile-phone networks, too, were ruined, because they’re routed through communication towers that crumpled like paper in Katrina’s 140-mile-an-hour winds. As a final insult, Katrina knocked out the power grid in swaths of the Gulf Coast - which was fatal for phone systems that require thousands of watts of juice. The surviving mobile-phone sites in New Orleans could run on diesel-generator backup, but with just one tank of gas each, they were capable of operating for only a few days. Even the mayor nearly lost contact with the outside world. After their satellite phones ran out of power, employees of the mayor’s office broke into an Office Depot and lifted phones, routers and the store’s own computer server.

-----------------------------------------
WiFi meshes elegantly dodge our phone system’s central problems. They’re low-power and ultracheap - and decentralized like the Internet itself, which was initially conceived to withstand a nuclear attack. You can use WiFi to build a do-it-yourself phone system that is highly resistant to disaster.

-----------------------------------------
WiFi does have its limitations. To begin with, an antenna can communicate with another antenna only if it has a clear line of sight. But because the system is so inexpensive, it wouldn’t be difficult to address this problem by placing antennas closely together in congested areas. Of course, a WiFi mesh wouldn’t work if its users had no supply of electricity. And emergency responders and the military will always need to rely on their own high-quality two-way radios and satellite phones. But for the rest of us, when disaster next strikes, WiFi meshes could be the clever system that keeps people in contact - from house to house.

Update - September 18, 2005

Geoffrey Young, one of our volunteers, has sent some photos taken in and around the New Orleans area. The first three pics are of St Claire Catholic church and school, in Waveland LA.






The following 2 photos are of John MacFarlane standing in front of his $200,000.00 home. John was in a wonderful mood because he and his wife survived. The last photo is of his neighbourhood.

Updates on our progress

The RadioResponse.org website has updates on our progress through the Bay St. Louis area and in New Orleans.

CCRP Press Release - September 14, 2005

The Canadian Communications Relief Project assists in relief efforts in areas affected by Hurricane Katrina

On Sunday Sept. 11, Geoffrey Young and William Waites of the Canadian Communications Relief Project Inc. (CCRP) were deployed in Rayville, Louisiana as part of the WISPA initiative which is providing Internet and communications access to hundreds of shelters in the state and surrounding areas.

CCRP has also received requests from organizations in New Orleans to aid in the establishment of radio broadcasting and communication facilities at several different locations in that city.

WISPA is comprised of wireless experts from across the continent that are in the affected areas on their own personal money, leaving life, business and family behind in order to come together and provide what relief their expertise allows. Thus far, the WISPA initiative has been responsible for putting numerous families in touch with loved ones feared dead after Katrina hit.

The CCRP is a registered non-profit organization created with the express purpose of providing aid to Hurricane Katrina survivors in the form of communication expertise, one of the most needed resources at this time. For more information and to monitor our progress visit:
http://katrina.cnt.org/wordpress/

The CCRP is also part of a coordinated effort with the University of Winnipeg to locate needy students affected by Hurricane Katrina. The University of Winnipeg has agreed to waive tuition fees, assist with registration, link affected students with health and counseling services, and help arrange housing. The university will also offer information technology support to assist a university or college in the affected area.

Reports on the progress of the project will be also be available as communication allows on Mon, Tues and Weds mornings of CKUW's morning show, The Beat, which airs 8-9 am on CKUW radio, 95.9FM in Winnipeg as well as online at CKUW.ca.

The members of CCRP on the ground in the south are there on their own personal savings and are reliant on donations in order to stay down south and continue their work in order to help as many as possible of the 1+ million people who have had their lives destroyed and are missing family and friends. Our members hope to stay in the affected areas as long as they are needed and the CCRP is also looking into sending additional volunteers to help.

Donations should be made out to the Canadian Communications Relief Project Inc. and can be dropped off at CKUW, University of Winnipeg radio, 515 Portage Avenue, Winnipeg, Manitoba or sent by mail to Carroll Fisher Belding, 1-1549 St. Mary's Road, Winnipeg, Manitoba, R2M 5G9.

CCRP welcomes all media inquiries and we will do what we can in order to arrange interviews/communications with our people on the ground in the south. Availability will be dependant on the level of devastation in the various communities as well as the speed with
which CCRP and WISPA volunteers can build news communications infrastructure with affected communities

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Geoffrey Young is the news director at community radio CKUW in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He has background in journalism and is currently taking international development studies at University of Winnipeg.

William Waites is a network communications engineer living in Montreal. He has developed Internet and VoIP networks in sectors ranging from the academic to corporate telecommunications firms. He is a pioneer in Internet broadcast streaming with slightly less than 10 years experience.

Stacey Belding is a lawyer in private practice who previously worked in communications in the non-profit sector. Kent Davies is a University of Winnipeg student and volunteer coordinator with CKUW radio. Kent and Stacey are working from Winnipeg to assist with the
efforts of the CCRP volunteers down south.

For more information about WISPA, contact: Mac Dearman, (318) 728-8600.

For more information about the University of Winnipeg's assistance offer, contact: Katherine Unruh, Director of Communications, (204) 782-3279 or Ilana Simon, Communications Officer, (204) 786-9930.

University of Winnipeg Press Release - September 9, 2005

The University of Winnipeg is reaching out to students affected by last week’s devastating hurricane Katrina.

Effectively immediately, the University will:
– Waive tuition fees for students in need – facilitate registering affected students in courses related to their area of study.
– link affected students with health and counselling services
– help make housing arrangements for students in need
– offer information technology support to assist a university and/or college in the affected area

On the ground in the US south, The University of Winnipeg is supporting our student efforts. Geoffrey Young, a UWinnipeg student and News Director of 95.9FM CKUW our University radio station, and colleague William Waites are on their way to the affected area to help establish communications links (the University has made an initial contribution of $500 to support this student effort).

The announcement was made by President Lloyd Axworthy at the University OmniTrax/Broe War Affected Children confrence taking place on campus today and all day Saturday, Sept 10th, 2005.

Recent Press - Washington Post and others

washingtonpost.com
Wireless Networks Give Voice To Evacuees

By Arshad Mohammed
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 9, 2005; A15

Hurricane Katrina survivor Caprice Butler had been at a church shelter in rural northeastern Louisiana for nearly a week when she finally heard her husband's voice on an Internet phone running on an improvised wireless network.

"I was just overjoyed," she said yesterday, tearing up as she spoke outside the church in the farming town of Mangham, about 200 miles from her flooded New Orleans home. "Words can't explain how I felt."

If the Butlers manage to reunite this weekend, as they hope, it will be because of a band of volunteer techies who are stitching together wireless networks at shelters across northeastern Louisiana using radio transmitters mounted on such items as a grain silo and a water tower.

With few reliable communications systems in place, people and companies from around the country are converging on the region to create improvised networks that give survivors and emergency personnel ways to talk and coordinate efforts.

While local telephone and wireless networks are slowly coming back, they remain spotty or nonexistent in some places, and fire, police and other rescue personnel have complained about the lack of a unified emergency communications system. To meet the needs of evacuees in Jackson, Miss., Dulles-based America Online has parked an 18-wheel truck at the Mississippi State Fairgrounds, a major shelter, with a satellite dish on top and 20 computers with Internet access inside. At the Houston Astrodome, volunteers have obtained a Federal Communications Commission license to set up a low-power radio station and are now struggling to get permission from local officials to broadcast to evacuees inside the stadium.

F4W, a Lake Mary, Fla., company, is under government contract to provide Internet phones and online access to Coast Guard officers cleaning up oil spills, using a portable satellite dish and handsets often deployed in forest fires.

The network at Mangham Baptist Church was the brainchild of Mac Dearman, a wireless Internet service provider who was driving past the church last week when he saw a group of parked cars, realized they were people who had fled the hurricane and set about providing relief, including food, clothing and online access.

Dearman hooked up a radio transmitter near the church and linked that to a voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) telephone and a computer, and suddenly the dozens of people taking refuge at the church had the ability to reach out to the outside world.

Mostly, they are searching for loved ones and filling out Federal Emergency Management Agency forms to get disaster aid.

"They just call from shelter to shelter to shelter looking for their kids or for their daddies or their brothers because they got separated, and they are just finding each other in the last few days," Dearman said, adding that people were often overwhelmed when they connected.

"They cried big tears, hugged my neck, shook my hand and patted me on the back. You'd have thought I was really giving them something that cost a lot of money," he added.

Dearman is working entirely with donated labor and equipment.

People from as far afield as Nebraska, Missouri and Indiana are camped out in his house, coordinating equipment deliveries, searching for shelters that need service, and then sending out volunteers to climb towers to hook up radio antennas and set up the networks.

"We are basically completely bypassing the phone system," said Matt Larsen of Scottsbluff, Neb., who said he was perched on a bar stool with his laptop at Dearman's kitchen counter.

Dearman estimated that he had run wireless links to about a dozen shelters near his home base of Rayville, La., but only about half were up and running because he had run out of equipment.

He was expecting fresh donations of secondhand computers, VoIP phones and wireless equipment. Once he has those in hand, he said, he hopes to extend to shelters closer to New Orleans and to Mississippi's Gulf Coast.

"It's been a godsend," said the Rev. Rick Aultman, pastor of Mangham Baptist Church, where about four dozen people are staying.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company



Technology Daily

Wireless Experts Aid Hurricane Victims
By Drew Clark

(Monday, September 12) Technology professionals proficient in wireless Internet access have established high-speed connections in at least 15 relief centers in northern Louisiana -- prompting many to argue for stronger policy incentives to create community and municipal broadband networks.

"We brought in PCs, voice-over-Internet protocol phones, and the wireless broadband links to make them useful," said Mac Dearman, owner of Maximum Access, a Louisiana-based wireless Internet service provider organizing a response for victims of Hurricane Katrina on behalf of the Wireless Internet Service Provider Association.

Evacuees used the VoIP phones over Wi-Fi connections to call relatives. "You wouldn't believe how many hugs we got," Dearman said.

"In a six-hour period Sunday, there were 10,000 VoIP calls from the shelters," added Rick Carnish, also of WISPA -- one of two associations representing wireless broadband providers and working on relief efforts related to the hurricane.

The other major group, part-15.org, was prepared to provide wireless Internet capabilities to evacuees sent to Fort Kelly Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, with 500 routers and 200 Internet phones provided by Cisco Systems and Vonage. But SBC Communications wired the relief center before part-15.org could set up shop.

"We were being told by the Red Cross information technology department that our services were needed," said Michael Anderson of part-15.org, an association of wireless ISPs that takes its name from the portion of the FCC regulations governing communications over "unlicensed" radio frequencies.

"We had teams standing by for an entire week. We transferred those needs to other assets, closer to the destruction area just outside New Orleans and just outside the Biloxi city limits," he said, referring to one of the Mississippi cities hardest hit by the storm.

Wireless Internet connections are proving to be a significant means of communication in and out of the disaster area, and some people are using the occasion to argue that more spectrum should be allocated for unlicensed devices, such as those using the Wi-Fi standard.

Others note that disaster relief and homeland security become important additional reasons to establish municipal broadband networks.

"There has been a lot of publicity on the Philadelphia" municipal broadband network but "less on Oklahoma City and Corpus Christi, Texas, which were primarily designed for public safety," said Reed Hundt, a former FCC chairman and now an advocate and board member of several wireless companies.

"Oklahoma City had its own experience with tragedy, and Corpus Christi, which is certainly not unaware of hurricanes, wanted networks that would help with first responders," Hundt added.

Both cities have established Wi-Fi networks as a way for police and firefighters to communicate in emergencies.

Because the technologies user lower power than traditional radio-frequency communication, it becomes easier to provide backup batteries that last longer, experts said.

Hundt said Congress should create a $1 billion equipment fund for emergency responders to use Wi-Fi. He also urged the FCC to devote six megahertz of spectrum near the digital television band -- in addition to 24 megahertz to be freed in the digital television transition -- for first responders.



Volunteers rebuild Gulf Coast communications with wireless nets

By John Cox, Network World, 09/16/05

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, a volunteer group of network and wireless experts has moved from outfitting small northeastern Louisiana shelters with wireless Internet access and VoIP phones to preparing a desperately needed 45M bit/sec wireless pipe for the entire relief effort in devastated Bay Saint Louis, Miss.

"I've never witnessed destruction like this," says Paul Smith, technology director with the Center for Neighborhood Technology , a Chicago non-profit devoted to making cities more livable. He's one of scores of network volunteers from all over the country who are creating one of the few success stories to emerge from Katrina's demolition of the Gulf Coast's technology infrastructure.

As of this week, the emergency management staff of this town of about 8,000 people, plus National Guardsmen; Red Cross workers; and local police, fire and government are relying on a couple of satellite connections, each supporting a 2M bit/sec downlink and just a 512K bit/sec uplink. One of the links had been set up at the Hancock County Medical Center by local U.S. Navy staff. The second was at NASA's Stennis Space Center, where the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) is based, coordinating all local, state and federal relief efforts in the area.

Outbound GSM cellular voice calls could be made fairly reliably, but inbound calls were overwhelming the battered cell networks, Smith says.

By the end of this coming weekend, volunteers are expected to have up and running a 45M bit/sec broadband wireless connection hopping from a Bay Saint Louis water tower west some 76 miles to Hammond, La. "We've been given access by the EOC to pretty much the city's entire infrastructure," Smith says. That means the volunteer team can commandeer one of the water towers outside town for the main backhaul connection, essentially a commercialized, high-powered 802.11a 54M bit/sec radio.

These devices, running in the unlicensed spectrum, require line-of-sight alignment. The link will probably make two intermediate hops before terminating in Hammond, La.

Spoking out from the water tower, other wireless links on 2.4- and 5.8-GHz bands will carry throughput to 25 shelters around the town, the medical center and most importantly to the EOC.

In some cases, Smith expects to deploy a wireless LAN mesh, using open source software from the Champaign-Urbana Community Wireless Network project , and hardware from Metrix Communications: single-board computers in a weatherproof housing, 802.11a/b/g radio cards, and Power over Ethernet to simplify deployment.

At each of these sites, PCs, laptops, and a combination of VoIP phones and VoIP-enabled analog phones will be able to access the radio bandwidth through a router or a switch.
Local action

This basic technology pattern and the entire volunteer wireless effort grew out of the decision by a former Mississippi river towboat captain turned wireless broadband provider to set up a similar arrangement at the Mangham Baptist Church in neaby Mangham, La., about 240 miles northwest of New Orleans.

Mac Dearman is CEO of Maximum Access, a wireless ISP (WISP) serving a large rural area around Rayville. The day after Katrina struck, he stopped at the church because it was crowded with cars, which was highly unusual given it was a Tuesday. He found scores of evacuees and realized everyone was trying to use the one phone in the church office. With one of his wireless towers visible nearby, Mac and his brother Jay, a local pastor, set up a premises radio, a couple of spare PCs and a couple of VoIP phones.

Evacuees were able to start registering on the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Web site, entering their names in the missing people databases, searching for relatives and calling them, at a time when government officials and emergency management crews could hardly communicate with each other.

Dearman started getting calls from other area churches, all of them sheltering evacuees and all with the same pressing need for communications. After about four days, Dearman e-mailed colleagues about what he was doing via a listserv at the Wireless ISP Association (WISPA ), which by then was working with another industry group of WISPs, Part-15.org , on ways to use wireless gear and expertise to restore communications.

Almost at once donations started flowing in, $1,100 within 30 minutes of Dearman's first e-mail. The next day, Jim Patient, president of Jeffco SOHO, a WISP in House Springs, Mo., showed up with a van loaded with relief supplies and time to spend working alongside Dearman. People kept arriving, from Seattle to Buffalo and everywhere in between, bringing still more supplies, equipment, money and unflagging energy despite the clinging, wet heat and fire ants.

After a conference call organized by the FCC on Friday, Sept. 9, Part-15 was given the job of coordinating volunteer efforts, and WISPA's officers threw their support behind that. Both groups used their e-mail lists and Web sites to promote the cause and provide channels for contributions of money and gear. Part-15 members were also streaming into the Gulf Coast area, working with local WISPs to restore their networks and creating new ones. "We can create voice and data services, of any magnitude, within 48 hours of arrival," says Michael Anderson, chairman of Part-15.
Two miles of Cat 5

In days, the growing volunteer crew based at Dearman's home had equipped over a dozen shelters in the Rayville area, stringing nearly two miles of Category 5 cable, giving hundreds of evacuees data and voice communications. By Monday, Sept. 13, less than a week after starting, the open source Asterisk IP PBX server being used had handled over 10,000 outbound calls, according to Jeffco's Patient. "And we don't tax the public phone network," he says. "On the public net, you have to call 15 times to get a connection. With our stuff, you get dial tone and you make the call."

When Patient returned to one shelter with another PC, one evacuee threw her arms around him and hugged him tightly. "She said 'God bless you, I found my brother,'" Patient says.

By the middle of last week, about 30 volunteers had moved south to Ponchatoula to work on outfitting additional shelters as well as addressing the Louisiana side of the wireless pipe for Bay Saint Louis. "The move came at the behest of two non-profits working in the Mississippi town: Inveneo, which designs affordable technology for developing countries, and CityTeam Ministries , which works with the homeless and poor in seven U.S. cities."
Frustrations

There have been plenty of frustrations, too. Local Red Cross chapters repeatedly refused to let WISPA volunteers set up wireless connections to their facilities, according to Dearman, relying instead on a single DSL line in some cases, and in one case on pay phones.

The Center for Neighborhood Technology's Smith brought down a batch of Pentium 3 PCs donated to the center, which reloaded them with the Linux operating system and a batch of open source software applications, including the Firefox browser. The computers worked fine for everything except what is arguably the most important application: the registration forms on the FEMA Web site.

After hours of troubleshooting, Smith found that FEMA requires the use of Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0, and no other. "And it's just a simple HTML form," Smith says. "It doesn't need the use of some special IE-only feature." Valuable hours were spent tracking down, and paying for, Windows licenses.

After going 72 hours without a shower, Smith says his odor started frustrating co-workers. They dragged him downtown where something perhaps even more valuable at that moment than wireless broadband had been set up: a semi-trailer rigged up with shower cubicles, a changing area and pressurized hot water.

All contents copyright 1995-2005 Network World, Inc. http://www.networkworld.com



The News Star
Article published Sep 9, 2005
Web link helps those in shelter

By Ian Morrison
imorrison@monroe.gannett.com

Most people wouldn't see Mangham as a technological hub, but Lewanda Stewart's stay in the town has convinced her to buy a computer someday.

Stewart, along with nine other family members, ended up at the Mangham Baptist Church shelter last week after fleeing Hurricane Katrina.

Stewart and her brother-in-law Cammie Mathis spent most of Thursday afternoon, and any free time they've had this last week, glued to a computer with wireless Web access at the shelter.

"I'm definitely going to have to get one now," Stewart said and laughed. On Thursday, she and her brother-in-law were looking up housing information on FEMA's Web site. Over the last couple of days, they've used the Internet to look up storm information, find various loved ones and to avoid waiting in line at the Monroe Civic Center for FEMA assistance.

"This has been excellent," Mathis said.

Stewart and Mathis, along with evacuees at 11 other shelters in rural northeastern Louisiana, all have Maximum Access owner Mac Dearman to thank.

Dearman, who runs the wireless Internet service provider out of Holly Ridge, has been spending every day of the last week along with 22 other network and computer industry employees installing phones and computers at shelters in towns such as Tallulah and Delhi.

"I noticed some shelters popping up in the area, and I thought they'd have a lot to accomplish and no way to do it," Dearman said.

Though phone service has been spotty in rural areas since the hurricane, the phones Dearman and his cohorts have been installing use a technology called Voice over IP and never go down because they're routed over the Internet, unlike regular phone lines or cell phones.

"I just thought we needed some hands to get down here," said Nebraska resident Matt Larsen, who flew in this week to help Dearman.

Larsen is one of the 22 friends and acquaintances who've made the trip to the area over the last week to stay at Dearman's home, lend a hand and pitch a tent in his back yard.

They've come from places like Seattle and Chicago. Two more are coming this week from as far as Ontario, Canada.

"It's been really neat," said Rick Aultman, pastor at the church. "We just wouldn't have thought about doing this kind of thing."