In Case Of Emergency, Read Blog

Andy Carvin, who spearheaded creation of the innovative Hurricane Information Center during Gustav and Ike last summer, has announced on his Twitter feed that the site is looking for online volunteers to help with preparations for what is now Tropical Storm Ida. The Center serves as a comprehensive clearinghouse and aggregator of information/content in addition to helping solicit and coordinate volunteers both inside and outside the impacted areas. As Carvin writes on its main page:

“…Ida is expected to make landfall on the Gulf Coast near the Alabama/Florida border late Monday or early Tuesday. I’ve already started updating the feeds on the homepage to aggregate Ida-related information, but there are still some tasks to be done.

Most importantly, we need to update the wiki: http://hurricanewiki.org. We need volunteers to review the wiki section by section and make sure that there are resources collected for Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. Much of this was done last year but it can’t hurt to be sure it’s up to date. If you plan to work on a section of the wiki, please let us know which one.

Next, we need to identify useful Twitter accounts so I can begin aggregating them using the new Twitter Lists feature. If you come across any useful Twitter accounts related to Ida – local news accounts, weather spotters, volunteers, local orgs, etc – please add them to the wiki here: http://www.hurricanewiki.org/wiki/Twitter_Resources.

I’ll work on putting together a Twitter list with all the accounts we pull together. Lastly, if there are any other online volunteer duties you can tackle in the next 48 hours, please speak up now and spell out what you can do, and if you need other volunteers to accomplish it.”

For more information and to volunteer, go to the Center’s main page here.