September will never be the same for the Bahamas. Hurricane Dorian obliterated the Abaco Islands and Grand Bahama in a matter of hours, changing the island and everyone that lived there. Currently, there are 67 reported deaths, 777 people living in shelters, 200 reported missing and thousands of residents are displaced. In one day, the northwest region of the Bahamas was forever changed and it’s expected to take years before it returns to a livable community.
For many, Dorian leaves a scar of survival and the undeniable power of people. After a hurricane finishes it devastation, normally reporters report the damage, interview the locals, share the death tolls and then for those unaffected the story is over. Well, the story is far from over for Bahamians and the many organizations working to recover the area. The Abaco Islands are devastated: Whole houses, hospitals, schools, churches, and police stations are gone. What currently stands is 1.5 billion pounds of debris.
How you clean up, dispose of and rebuild 1.5 billion pounds of people’s lives is mind-boggling to me — but not to many disaster-relief organizations and certainly not to the people who hope to return there one day. It’s been heartwarming to see the level of generosity showered on Dorian victims. Many major U.S. companies, churches, non-profit organizations, and everyday people have given financial donations, water, food, products, and manpower to help out. It is definitely a labor of love that will need to continue for some time to support full recovery.
As a company, Spatial Networks donated access to our Fulcrum platform to organizations volunteering their time to saving lives and rebuilding communities after Dorian. Currently, several disaster-response organizations are using our platform to rebuild in the Bahamas. We are proud to support them and the thousands of survivors working hard to recover their lives.
Here are their latest updates:
Team Rubicon
- 15,636 volunteer hours
- 40,000 cubic feet of debris removed and counting
- Daily Mobile Medic Clinic
- Home/buildings assessment
Fulcrum allows Team Rubicon’s mobile medics to report mandatory information to the World Health Organization in real-time while also communicating critical patient information within their teams, ensuring the safety of their patients and volunteers all while documenting how many volunteers checked in and much debris is removed daily.
NetHope
Provided initial internet connection/installations in collaboration with other connectivity partners. Currently transitioning and preparing for decommission in late November/December.
Network installations requested: 149
Network assessment completed: 149
Network installations completed: 48
During deployment, NetHope uses Fulcrum for the following:
- Assistance requests
- Site assessments
- Site planning
- Installations/backlogs
- Task tracking/completion
- Reports (internal/external)
- Reworking
- Tracking organization contacts
Unitarian Universalist Justice Florida (UUJF)
Church assessments/rebuilds: Churches serve the community critical resources (food, water, meds, housing) UUJF identified churches still intact or minimally damaged, and used them as distribution hubs.
Housing assessments: Churches in Freeport are conducting surveys with a small field team of volunteers going door to door to document needs and take pictures. The church leaders are working on distributing aid and are also transitioning into training teams to accomplish Rapid Household Assessments. We have clergy interfacing with government entities and documenting survivors with special needs.
Mission Critical Functions Surveys establish priorities for resilience during recovery. Local teams are being trained to facilitate these surveys.
Moving forward, the recovery process will change from clean-up-and-rescue to rebuild-and-bring-home. Assessments, evaluations, progress reporting and other resources will still be needed to help these communities fully recover. We plan to be there every step of the way, making data easy to access, enabling decisions to be made and change to occur faster. We are proud of our Fulcrum Ready partners; together we will help the Bahamas rebuild.
Fulcrum is a data collection platform that enables organizations to reduce costs, access critical data in real-time, and improve decision making at every level. With Fulcrum, you can create custom apps using our simple drag-and-drop builder to turn your paper documents into digital forms that your field teams can quickly complete on mobile devices. Our software is available at no cost to humanitarian and volunteer disaster-relief organizations via Fulcrum Community.