[RTC List] Emergency aid efforts

[Larry Goldberg]

Dear RTC folks,

This is an emergency appeal and I know you folks will come through with a
fast and efficient solution.

I am a member of the Rotary Club of Southwest Eureka.  As with most of
you, I have been watching the news about the fires in S. California and
this is a monumental disaster on the scale of Hurricane Katrina - except
this time it's in our state.  We need to step up and help NOW.

It occurred to me while watching CNN news that the air quality is
unbelievably bad right now (and all of us who have experienced downstream
smoke from our fires a few years ago knows what they must be experiencing
now).  On top of folks losing their homes and neighborhoods, the fact that
they're breathing this dangerous air is really scary (recall the long-term
health fallout from the people in New York City after 9/11!)  In any case,
especially for children, these folks have to GET OUT NOW and wait for the
fires to subside before they can get back to rebuilding their lives (and
speaking about Katrina, you know how long that could take).

I had a brainstorm this morning that we should offer a home-matching
service which can pair people up through an automated website to find
temporary housing.  My Rotary Club (and probably all the clubs of this
area) are prepared to sponsor this effort  but we need a host site with a
secure SQL server with an application running that can do this.  In other
words, we're trying to find someone out there that is already running some
kind of matching service which will allow people to log on securely, enter
their info (number of rooms or house available for people to stay, pets,
length of stay available, etc...) and match them to people who log in
looking for a place to stay.  I can give specific info we need once we
find a working system.  This type of site must already exist in the local
area, but I don't know where.

I thought that the Red Cross might have something like this working from
the Hurricane Katrina disaster, but they don't.  It appears that the
Governor's office of Emergency Services could use a system like this too. 
Who has ideas how to do this and how quickly can we get it up and running?
It needs to be branded with the Rotary International logo and it needs to
be secure and robust enough to handle a lot of traffic.  Please send me
your ideas and I welcome all input on how best to accomplish this.  Thanks
- I know you will all come through!