What happens to your website when disaster strikes? Do you have a plan? I remember the first time we discussed this here at the University of Texas at Austin. As usual…our group saw the humorous side. “Ya know, if Austin was a smoking hole in the ground, I just wouldn’t give a damn about the website.” roflmao “Like anyone would know to go to emergency.utexas.edu. How silly is that?”
Then, my brilliant boss (seriously, he didn’t pay me to say that) reminds us that 50,000 students attend our university and if a disaster did happen there would be a lot of very concerned family and friends who would be so grateful for any bit of information they could find about the situation.
As I sit and watch the horrible effects of hurricane Katrina and hear the heart wrenching stories of loss, it dawns on me, that emergency.tulane.edu is a very good idea. And even more interesting (as my co-worker Andy pointed out), it looks quite a bit like a blog.
Kudos to Tulane for their exemplary effort to keep information flowing during such a devastating situation. And as you climb into your dry bed tonight, consider sharing a bit of your good fortune with those who have lost so much. Donate to the Red Cross.
We have a set-up for the California State University system that deals with just this. (Of course, we are worried about the quake that’s going to make California fall off the rest of the continent, and not hurricanes.) We have plans ranging from “there’s an emergency but we can still post to our own server” to “our server, and/or all the humans are incapacitated.” In the latter scenario, our site gets taken over and hosted by a buddy school in a different part of the state.
I also had to put a system in place where non-web savvy folks could post to the emergency page. I used Textpattern. It is just like a blog, as you pointed out, and I thought a blogging tool was the easiest to both configure and explain to a non-webbie.
You mean the last thing you grab in your flight from Austin wouldn’t be the latest tape backup, along with the scrap of paper on which you’ve written the local DNS propagation time?
I think emergency.whatever.edu is a great idea. But the real question is – how would anyone get a map of the smoking hole?
Regarding where to get maps for the ‘smoking hole’, a scary final paragraph in report in today’s Washington Post depicts some of our
most important government branches as having to get in the map lines like everybody else!
Yikes! FBI agents? National Guard outfits? They have to rummage around at 7 Eleven or CVS just like everybody else?
IN KATRINA’S WAKE : Scenes From The Disaster Area
[p. 2 of 2]
— Amy Joyce
New Orleans Maps Disappear
As residents in New Orleans struggle with dire shortages of all manner of essential goods, people throughout the country are facing another shortage caused by the hurricane — a dearth of New Orleans maps.
Since the hurricane struck and flooding started, many map stores and online dealers around the country have quickly sold out of detailed maps of the city and the state. Rand McNally, which produces one of the most comprehensive maps of the area, was completely out of stock Tuesday. Map stores from coast to coast said they had sold out, reordered and often sold out again. Many had downtown tourist maps or guidebooks left in stock but not detailed road maps. They are being snapped up by family members and friends trying to find loved ones; reporters and aid workers heading to the region; power companies and builders planning restoration efforts; and collectors looking for souvenirs.
“We’re sold out of all the maps of New Orleans and the Gulf area,” said Cory Rostein, an employee at ADC Map and Travel in the District. “Normally we have 10 or 15 in stock at a time, but we sold those, ordered more and sold those, too.”
MapSource, a map publisher based in St. Petersburg, Fla., said it has taken thousands of orders for maps of the Gulf region. The company has stores throughout the Southeast, and its affiliate in New Orleans survived the storm intact.
“We’ve been getting calls from FEMA, the FBI, the National Guard, insurance companies, electric companies, relief agencies, they all need maps,” said Mike Klien, MapSource’s director of operations. “The printer had to run a second shift to keep up with demand.”
— Kari Lydersen
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/07/AR2005090702358_2.html
Wow, that is a interesting issue. Makes me think about my personal distaste for paper maps. I’m a Streets & Trips kind of girl. And since I’m never caught without my PDA…I have the detailed maps of my most frequented cities right at my fingertips.
So…at a moment’s notice, I can surf the web and download a detailed map of any city. Or I can go find my laptop…pull up Streets & Trips and custom make my own “pocket map” for my PDA…making sure that the boundries of my custom map include all the places I care about.
My maps link nicely with my address book so I can quickly pinpoint a friends office or home onto the map, as well as search for streets and restaurants.
I’ll never go back to paper maps again!