Informal Networks and Entrepreneurship in Disaster Reponse

Critical to disaster response of any scale, domestic or international is last mile local tie-in and distribution. The resources brought to bear by the multitude of State, Federal and local in large-scale responses are usually astounding and inspiring. Yet, despite how well resourced and intentioned the collective response effort maybe there is inevitably bureaucracy within the relief ecosystem, political obstacles and local cultural nuances that affect efforts. This is not a negative, it is simply a matter of reality as with any other ecosystem which needs to be navigated and managed.

It is easy to pick targets and to belittle respective agencies and efforts, however that is never a productive course of action especially during a response. Currently in PR the realities on the ground are unsurprisingly different than what is being portrayed in the news. As with most international disaster recovery efforts I have been a part of there are local aspects to operating in PR that need to be considered and factored into the overarching response. No group is better qualified to maneuver locally than the locals themselves.

To date our small team led by Steve Birnbaum who was a former member of the FEMA Innovation Team has focused on restoring communications working with the Telcos and various response agencies and helping to facilitate inter-agency communications. I am focusing on the issues still beleaguering the more remote regions of the island. We are seeking out and collaborating with local organizations, the entrepreneurial community, and individuals that have mobilized their own direct response efforts. While these groups are often best suited to solve the acute challenges at hand, they often operate outside of the relief resource system. This is due to unfamiliarity with navigating the federal response environment, geographic hindrances or clearance issues. As a result they often fail to connect with the tools and resources intentioned for them. In a small way we are working to informally mesh these resources with these needs to help to culturally mediate between perceived and actual ground-truth and to sync Federal resources with the local community.

Informal networks are the name of the game. As in any other realm of life its about who you know that dictates how effectively one can solve a task at hand. To date we have reached out through networks and communities like the local Babson College alumni group, The Tom Brown Tracker School, The Defence Entrepreneurs Forum etc. to find local's to plug-in directly with. It's these networks that have, and continue to enable us to get invaluable tie-in to realities on the ground and to source assistance with navigating the inevitable cultural, political and logistical nuances inherent to any response.  

Its critical to bring the local entrepreneurial community to the table and to bridge Federal assets with local resources to navigate the nuances inherent to the Puerto Rico response. 

When working to fuse local resources with Federal assets protocols and systems need to be gently messaged as all stakeholders have different ways of accomplishing things. The way Puerto Rican businesses and NGOs operate may not at all jive with the way FEMA functions. In times of heightened stress, the “system” becomes the baseline and those shouldered with stressful responsibilities often stick strictly to the book to alleviate further unknowns. This makes it harder to act dynamically but is also understood. With so many moving parts, without systems and protocols in-place it would be a disorganized mess. The Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Response community has come a long way in regards to structure and efficiency in the last decade. It would be nice to see the next evolution focus on a capacity to embrace and celebrate more dynamic, locally sourced solutions and to enhancing local subject matter expertise into efforts.  

From the private sectors perspective, increasing focus should be paid to efforts around whole-community readiness and overall preparedness. Its always a positive to work towards strengthening a community be it a business or a church to be less dependent on outside resources during times of emergency.  

 If you are on the ground in Puerto Rico and have a need for logistical support, comms infrastructure, fuel supply etc. please reach out to us. This is not intended for individual requests, but for community-centric taskings be it a specific municipality, large company employee base etc. We will work to bridge your needs with Federal assets we may be able to wrangle. Similarly if you have large-scale resources, logistical infrastructure intact your looking to put into play please let us know. While there are formal procedures in place we work to bring solutions from outside the system within and vise versa to try to stave off lapses in resource capacities and response efforts.

There are strong working relationships between various aid organizations, but fewer unconventional, cross discipline partnerships between local NGO’s businesses, and larger scale entities like FEMA that occur. This naturally leads to somewhat of a disconnect between on the ground needs, execution capacity and creative solutions to tough challenges that require multidisciplinary approaches.

 In Hurricane Sandy we connected the Brooklyn Boulders climbing community with Team Rubicon, the veteran disaster response organization. This partnership enabled the largest and longest sustained response operation overall during Hurricane Sandy in the Far Rockaways. In the Philippines in the wake of typhoon Haiyan we helped to forge relationships between an entrepreneur and owner of the privatized 911 system, a local business owner with large trucking and warehousing infrastructure intact and response organizations. in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake and again after Hurricane Matthew, we worked with a multitude of small local organizations, large domestic companies and the relief community to combine resources to tackle common goals.

It is non-traditional relationships and rapid partnership formations in these times of duress across sectors like this that yield tremendous impact results. As large-scale occurrences are increasing in frequency and growing in complexity and scale, there is a developing need within the realm of disaster response for entrepreneurial approaches to problem solving. A disaster response operation is much like launching a start-up, except lives are on the line.