• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, September 19, 2005

BATON ROUGE -- In the days following Hurricane Katrina, with much of this region's communications grid unstable or incapacitated, a rag-tag team of tech volunteers operating under the auspices of the American Red Cross cobbled together a makeshift Wi-Fi network, managing to accomplish what government groups like the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and the Federal Communications Commission, and commercial service providers operating in the region could not: Get the Big Easy and surrounding areas back online.

The ad hoc team is captained by two tech workers: Louisiana native Ben Byboth--a stocky, bearded man in his late 20¹s, with a large cross tattooed on his left calf; and his cyber-cohort Zac Mutrux, from Alameda, Calif.--tall, gangly, and goateed, with shoulder-length hair pushed back under a worn black baseball cap.

Operating with a network of roving Winnebagos equipped with Wi-Fi-enabled laptops, the team came up with an ingenious plan for restoring online access to aid the communications of the area¹s largely civilian relief effort.

Byboth and Mutrux, working from of the Riverside Metroplex in Baton Rouge--an arena that is home to perhaps 5,000 hurricane victims--had to make do with limited resources borrowed mainly from private sector bandwidth and hardware donations.

"I think we're pretty clearly stepping into a vacuum," Mutrux replied tactfully, when asked whether FEMA or the FCC had aided Red Cross communications efforts. Although the FCC freed up a small amount of bandwidth for new Wi-Fi hotspots in San Antonio, TX, earlier government promises of region-wide Wi-Fi for Mississippi and Louisiana have essentially fallen by the wayside.

Contacted by OnlineMediaDaily, FEMA and FCC officials in Washington could not even provide contact information for agency officers in the field who ostensibly were involved with the project.

Instead, the private sector ended up picking up much of the slack, both through extensive donations of Wi-Fi bandwidth and cooperation with volunteer technicians repairing the physical infrastructure of relays and telecommunications towers.

Mutrux rattled off so many Wi-Fi benefactors that it's difficult to single one company out, but the Web site of the umbrella organization coordinating their efforts -- part-15.org -- provides specific details for the curious.

The effort isn't entirely altruistic. Economic self-interest plays some role in the private sector donations, says Mutrux. "I think these companies realize this is a unique opportunity to demonstrate what Wi-Fi can do."

But Wi-Fi connectivity will only take a devastated community so far. Actual relief work still requires personnel on the ground willing to donate time, and a means of moving from hotspot to hotspot. The vehicle of mercy in this case is the lowly Winnebago. A fleet of donated campers--upgraded, of course, with the latest technology--have traveled to makeshift shelters navigating treacherous routes to visit gymnasiums, parish churches, civic centers, and any other public spaces, and gathering basic information including names and addresses of evacuees that have been stored on spreadsheets. Then traveling to the nearest Wi-Fi hotspot, the team uploads the information onto a national database.

This database enables Red Cross officials to direct food, water, medicine, and other relief supplies as needed, and--perhaps more importantly--has allowed hurricane victims to locate loved ones who were separated in the chaos of evacuation.

All told, this brilliantly simple system may have saved hundreds of lives, and reunited thousands of family members--although it is difficult to know, as few figures are kept.

In any event, the idea is remarkably practical, even beautiful--a graceful leap in the midst of deadly chaos.

In fairness, while the public media grid was in disarray, the internal networks of key government entities like the National Guard and state emergency management agencies appeared to be functioning admirably. In Mississippi and Louisiana, secure broadband systems established by state National Guard corps allowed commanders to quickly assess damage and plan their response. As emergency workers and National Guardsmen moved to protect and provide for evacuees, committed Nextel networks allowed prompt and reliable contact between individuals responsible for relief.

But the failure of government public information distribution spanned the entire disastrous fortnight, as the hurricane first bore down on the Gulf Coast, followed by the breaking levees in New Orleans, and then rising floodwaters that made evacuation urgently necessary.

In Covington, Mississippi, for example, FEMA officials moved from house to house with printed contact sheets of useless phone numbers when cell and landline systems were still down. And a number of evacuees from Louisiana sheltering at the coliseum in Jackson, Mississippi said they received their first notification of evacuation plans not from government officials but from proprietors of the local Wal-Mart, which restored communications before city hall.

While testifying to the efficiency of the private sector, these stories--as with so many others in the aftermath of Katrina--do not bode well for government-led crisis management in the event of future emergencies.