 So thank you everybody for joining, obviously this is a very important topic in conversation. One of the challenging things about disaster planning is there's all types of disasters you could potentially have to plan for and they could be as small as you have a single internet provider at your location or one of your locations and that line is down and you have no idea you know the amount of time it's going to take to get that back up depending upon what the type of issue is you know it could be a couple hours to a couple days I've had a location in New York City there was a manhole fire and there was a fiber lines going to all kind of businesses that were melted and they was it took about three weeks to a month to fix those lines and luckily we had a backup at that line at that location but the backup generally is not as good as your primary so we hobbled along but things you know we're working but without that backup we would have been a challenge to get a secondary line installed pretty quickly so that's you know an example of one possible disaster to you know dealing with you know say Hurricane Sandy and the floods that that happened in New York City and being flooded out of a location and not having access to equipment that did not have power internet and one who is on our panel from Puerto Rico Legal Services he's going to talk about Hurricane Maria and you know the impact that he had so planning for disasters could mean you know something very small but just the amount of time that the outage is occurs to something more like a natural disaster like a hurricane and having to deal with that so this is everyone on the panel Liz Keith who's also on this panel she's going to talk from the perspective from pro bono net and some of the resources and that they're able to provide and not only from them but just other resources that are available in the event that you have to run into it run into a disaster if there are any questions we are going to have we're going to leave time at the end of this presentation for for a question and answer if you don't want to forget your question feel free to chat in the webinar and we'll make sure to cover those questions at at the end so without further ado Juan all yours come on all right hi everyone my name is one of us I'm the IT director of Puerto Rico legal services and just to start just a little bit background of us we all speak we are in no proper cooperation like maybe of you are we are an LSE funded program and we actually were established in 1966 and we currently are the largest civil legal aid provided in Puerto Rico we throughout the island we have 15 branch offices and about 14 satellite offices when we talk about satellite offices are pretty much we have make some agreements with some of the municipalities and they have given us a space on their office buildings and usually it's like one or two days a week or every other week kind of a thing but since Maria we actually have increased almost two-fold what we used to have before so right now we went for like seven eight satellite offices to about 14 currently and there's more coming down the pipeline a lot of the municipalities they want us to be in their location since we we're not in every single town in Puerto Rico and of course we have you know special projects and you can see those at the end of the slide next and of course this is all about Hurricane Maria and how we dealt with with her September 20 you can see pretty much covered the whole island of Puerto Rico we were you know a lot of devastation after the hurricane like many other places like happy with Harvey and the California wildfires and what's going on right now with California too so next and of course you know you probably see a lot of these pictures before in the news but this basically what happens after a major hurricane goes through an island and a lot of our people you know they lost their houses the laws to the longing so it was pretty hard for everybody in diamond during that time next and and of course our buildings our offices got also we had a lot of problems with our offices mainly because we have a lot of water damage we actually had one office but they actually have to shut down for about four months because there was so much water damage that we have to pretty much go back in and rebuild it but at least the main structure was okay next so see some of the challenges that we actually had after the event pretty much and all telecommunication services will almost nonexistent we're talking about we couldn't even call anybody actually there was only one radio station left in the island for a few days they actually it was interesting because they actually had a they kept their own analog system up and that was the only thing that actually worked through the first few days in Puerto Rico so most of the communication was done through you know whoever could call the station was one way of actually communicating with everybody one thing that we had and that's because our emergency line was hosted in all premise in our central office when we didn't have electricity we didn't have Internet therefore our you know our emergency line was down for our employees that's usually what we they used to to find out what's going on with with work another thing is that right after the following week after Maria we have to do the payroll for everybody and that was kind of a challenge mainly because again we depended of internet to actually process the whole payroll it was interesting the the day I mean the Monday after the hurricane we actually came you know the security staff came in to the central office of headquarters and we actually had to go into the parking lot because we didn't have any power to actually start working manually making sure that we can run the payroll afterwards we actually was trying to find some internet signal and luckily we were close to one of the word our bank and they actually they were actually offering free internet but because there was so many people using it was really challenging trying to to get into the system it wasn't what we were lucky though that our controller knew some people in the bank and the only way we actually were able to run the payroll is because they allow us to go inside the bank and get into a terminal and that's actually how we were able to do the payroll otherwise we couldn't do it there was a lot of gas and diesel shortages throughout the island the first few days was almost hardly none when they start actually diesel and gas was trying to starting to flow one of the you know one of the things is that you only can buy ten dollars worth of gas so and you will stay online for about you know probably four or five six hours just to get 10 to 20 dollars worth of gas maximum and for some of our employees that left that live far away from their work I mean it was very challenging for them to actually be able to get to work because it was no you know it was no enough gas to go around one of the things we noticed and is that because it was a highest shortage of diesel we have in our central office we actually have a big power generator actually generates electricity for the whole building and so there's a 120 gallon diesel tank but the thing is there is outside of our building I mean it's all have link link fences and barbed wire but because people were looking for diesel especially to run their generators they were going around actually you know taking you know drilling holes in the tanks just to get the diesel out so the thing is is that we needed to find security for our building and at that time we couldn't communicate with our security contractor so we actually literally had to go around and find a company they have some security and literally verbally do it get a contract with them so we so we can actually be able to to to protect our generator so it was there was there was a you know it's interesting because we couldn't you know we couldn't it was hard to find somebody so we did and we were able to see a couple of days has some security the 24 security for our building until everything you know got better also another challenge which was actually on myself is that because there was no enough because it was very expensive to get the diesel in all the time it was a shortage I actually had to we finally got the electricity up and I mean the data center up we actually have to shut down every day the data center in the morning come in and bring it up again so that's that was a little challenging there also before Maria we had Hurricane Irma come through and before that we were actually working on migrating to office 365 we actually delay the the migration due to Irma and we set it up just before Maria and we actually started migration and we were done with it but all the sudden we have Maria in top of us and we were not sure if most of our employees were able to actually get into the system so that was kind of hard as part of the communicating with everybody like I said before we had a branch office was closed for four months so we actually have to relocate all the personnel to other offices while while the branch office was being rebuilt and another thing is that there was no internet redundancy in branch offices so we actually what we had to do is we have some hotspot that we were able to get and we were actually moving hotspots around when the offices were coming up with the internet so but at the beginning we looked about you know a couple of months before we actually started doing that next please so I just wanted to so you can see how you know what how long it tooks to start recovering everything by by the Tony Faith was identified they say that we actually met at the headquarter building and started the payroll process the 26 we actually were able to energize our power generator but we didn't have any electricity yet so that's why we have to ask shut down and bring up the the generator every day we had we actually have three internet providers coming into the central office only one survive and we finally got that one up until October by the next by the third of October LSE was calling us because people wanted to donate to us and our web page wasn't up and the thing is is our web page was hosted on premise here at the headquarters building so what we were already working on a new page it was an hundred percent ready but because people wanted to donate and we have the donated links to it we actually migrate you know the to the new web page right away and that came in actually that was a blessing because a lot of people actually started donating into the using that page by the fifth October we actually were able to get most of the branch office managing attorneys coming into into the central office or headquarters for a meeting to plan out what we're going to do next interestingly though is that for some of them I mean on a regular regularly is the longest office from our headquarters it's about between two to three hours depending on traffic to get here so some of them they actually you know wrote you know it drove you know for four hours just to get here to be able to start planning what we're going to do next by 9 October everybody was are starting to report to work by the 10th the first branch office was energized but did they have internet actually the first offices that had internet was around mid-November by February we have a hundred percent energized by March you're a hundred percent with internet and by June all utilities you know including internet was pretty much stable until then I mean we had for our times where we actually the power we will go out on the internet will go out especially in a couple of areas but what we did though is that we as the branch offices starting to come up with electricity if they didn't have in our main provider wasn't up for internet we actually went in and set up a hotspot in that office one thing though is that when we went ahead and got those hot spots actually we're kind of a hot spot router type and of course that was was was available for us and we didn't realize that the that the model of router wouldn't allow us to change part of the IP address so we actually end up changing and modifying the DHCP on our servers in those branch offices because we they have like a failover type of firewall so we actually have to plug in directly into the network so one thing is that we learned is that we needed to check better the specifications of that router how what we could actually change next so basically you know after after we have the meeting with all the magic attorneys and we went back to work in about a couple of weeks after and so one of the things we did is that one of our attorneys got trained in the staff for act and he actually started training a lot of the volunteer attorneys and in-house attorneys on this act so they can actually go out and help all the all the victims of the hurricane we actually because a lot of the it was done there's not much happening at the branch offices because the our clients couldn't go in a lot of them you know it's hard to get into the offices we actually went out to the communities and started visiting communities and government offices to actually offers our services one thing though is that because we they have internet and the we needed to actually open cases and document everything according you know to LSE regulations the central office became actually a printing office because we had to develop toolkits for all the branch offices so they can go out and open cases because a lot of you know a lot of the branch offices they have electricity or internet so that was a big big effort in the central office we actually we didn't have actually a toolkit or anything similar to to collect all the data what happened later is that after all the data was I mean all the cases was open we needed to go back and input all that data into our case management system so that was a big challenge for all the branch offices because a lot of them they actually have to go come in to the branch to them into the to the central office to actually submit all that data also we were one big effort was actually correct collaborating with FEMA to make sure that we have some of our attorneys in the center recovery centers and help them you know with all the victims of the hurricane trying to get aid next please so now that we have to go through all that we needed to prepare for you know next event our next major hurricane for the future so we we realized that we needed to revise our business business continuity and disaster recovery plan mainly because I think we we were focused mostly in the disaster recovery from the IT standpoint and we never went back and looked and how the business of the business processes were going to continue during the disaster so right now we in the process of revising the whole thing one thing that we also decided was that we needed to move to the cloud faster than we were planning on so we started with our web page we definitely went to the to the cloud on that one we hosted off premises thanks to a donation from legal server we actually migrating to legal server as I speak right now we are we going live on the 10th of December with legal server we in the process of training all our personnel and doing the modifying and configuring legal server to make sure we are ready for the 10th of December we also we use the dynamics GP for our financial system that also is going it's going to be hosted I mean off premises just starting next month on that and finally we also doing our telephone system we actually going with a void provider and we move in the whole system to the cloud we actually are about three branch office already moved in with the system one of the nice thing about the system is that we are going to be able to have a centralized system for the whole operation one thing is that we also working is is redundancy in branch offices you know one of the things that you know it took a while to get our main internet provider to to get have internet in our in all our branch offices so that took a while and we with the with the hotspots we were able to actually move you know be able to get all the offices to do some work but we realized that we have to come up with somehow make sure that that every branch office has a failover system for internet especially now that we are moving everything to the cloud we figure that as my fact one of the things we plan to do is set up some hops around the island pretty much like north house east west where we can have internet that's all internet by satellite because that way we have some power and we're getting some power generators more once to those branch offices we can have that then we at least we can have internet telephone system having that kind of system there we also we realized that one of the things that when we started to go out to the communities we realized that we didn't have enough laptops so that was that became a problem because only we only at that time we only had one laptop per branch office so only one lawyer basically one attorney could go out and do some work so so right now we are in the process of I mean this was already planned we were already planning to do this anyways but we didn't do it it wasn't timely enough to do you know when when Ria hit we were in the process of actually trying to acquire all those laptops so now now we're doing that through a and by the way we had some some offices in the States actually we they were they sent us additional laptops we actually used to to deploy to our branch offices so that was great in that sense but right now we the plan is to actually get a laptop for attorney through a donation from friends of legal services we were able to actually and I'll show the picture a little later but we actually set up like what we call it solar powered portable office and the whole thing was to so we can go out and and and give service to to our clients and to the victims and we don't have to depend on you know having electricity all the time because this system actually you can actually recharge the battery and charge all the laptops on a portable printer scanner that we actually got also in communication with some of our especially one of our AGOs that we work with they actually were talking about and they were looking at this alternate communication system which basically is it's kind of a mesh you know system and basically it's only for texting and you can use your cell phone with it but the thing is you have enough around people can actually do communicate with each other and chill from one to the other because it's kind of a mesh system so you want to look at more about this we actually started to look at this maybe for for a future deployment on another disaster is you can go to that website I put there www.tina.com and probably you can learn more about it next place so this is actually what we end up buying we actually getting one we actually got one for each branch office we're going to get a second one because we were able to get some disaster relief money from LSE and as you can see is basically have a portable printer scanner the one in the middle is the battery it's just a hundred watt battery that can be recharged with the solar panel in the back and of course it's less than a microsoft surface and mainly we used that one we actually got that one because you can get eight to ten hours of battery on that so next so we are now a year after and we still working with FEMA we still deploying attorneys to the FEMA DRCs and now the incoming CRC right now community resource center we still collaborating with some some communities we're private services with them taking service first over there and and of course we are locating you know people on disaster we actually working also with how we are some of some of the working groups that we're working with the disaster housing recovery and poverty which is national low-income housing coalition that you got PR which is our statewide website and actually and we our pro bono ink which are some grantee that work with us on actually doing pro bono work our executive director right now is a member of the LSE disaster task force and we just recently last month we received a disaster relief grant from LSE and one of the things we're doing with it and I think a lot of people a lot of programs that are using legal server are looking forward to this is the fact that we do an offline intake web and phone app so and that should be we should be coming out on December of no September of 2020 we should be able to be done with it but what that's gonna do is allow us to go out to the field and you know open cases and qualify clients without needing internet and avoiding what happened to us last I mean early this year that we have to actually re-input all the cases and we actually looking about 3,000 cases that we actually took that a lot of them actually had to be inputted again after was done by hand with use of the toolkit of course we also getting money to do the mobile technology which is basically what we're talking about is getting those additional solar power portable office and we also getting some satellite internet satellite antennas to be able to get some you know offices some hops for when a disaster strikes we usually have good to set up a places around the island where everybody can report to and work out of those places and of course we doing we getting additional money to to really increase the provodal reach efforts we during the Maria there were some there was a lot of actually provodal attorneys that did some work but there was no a concentrated effort to actually manage the whole thing so with this we're trying to set up a sensory manageable way to get attorneys to cooperate with disaster strikes next so so some of the vessels are basically you know definitely we didn't have the business continuity plan wasn't current we didn't foresee not having you know internet or no communications whatsoever like I said before we we were concentrated in making sure all the IT was able to survive which which it did you know the only thing is that we'd have an internet you know providers to give you the whole thing you have to give the internet but but the equipment survived you know so we were okay there but we never thought about how do we go to give a service to a client when we they have no technology whatsoever that wasn't really you know never thought out I think so we went back and revising all that one thing is is that we realize that now more than ever we need to be more mobile we need to get more equipment and we're doing that to our attorney so they can go out and go to the communities and be able to do work especially now that we're getting the legal server offline web app we definitely need to get the app to them definitely we realize that we were not mobile enough after the hurricane definitely we need to provide internet redundancy in the branch offices so they can actually do work especially when the internet providers go out and I put this trash bags over computer equipment it's because I mean it's a very low tech but when after the whole hurricane we did not lose any equipment any computer equipment no laptops we they have even though a couple offices had a lot of water over the over the equipment especially here the central office and not the office where actually it was water all over the place but the fact that before we left the office everybody went out and put a trash can over all the computer equipment that actually did work and of course you know you we have to you have to plan for the worst right now we we're thinking about is like the worst case right now in Puerto Rico is a it's an earthquake and even though we haven't got you know a long time but that could happen so right now our business continuity plan and disaster recovery is taking that into consideration next so you know when when the hurricane hit for the first few months you have no green whatsoever the green and the island was scarce now we buy finally we had some green back I think we're getting back trying to get back into the to the normal back to normal I guess I would say so anyway so so hopefully I mean at least this year we didn't have any hurricanes hopefully I think we have at least another couple of weeks in the hurricane season hopefully we never didn't get hit again but hopefully in the future we will definitely prepare for it next and this thank you on that was all great information it is so you are up I think we're doing a pretty good on time but you you're you're up just let me know when you'd like me to change the slide okay great well thank you so much Michael and SART and I won and just so impressed and in awe at the challenges that you and services like Alice and the team faced in the wake of Hurricane Maria and the creative response and relative speed that you were able to to have and bringing systems and services back online facing such widespread power and telecom issues and also really enjoyed and appreciated your emphasis on building where we looking ahead towards the future so impressive work all around so just for this next segment I'm going to take a little bit of a different approach than one and talk about technology planning not so much within an organization but within a regional or state justice community as a whole and we'll draw on pro bono net experience in this space in direct experience in the wake of Superstorm Sandy and our work with field partners in a number of regions from 9-11 and Hurricane Katrina onward so if we go to the next slide okay great so it just for people that aren't familiar with pro bono net we are a national nonprofit that focuses on using technology to increase access to legal self-advocacy tools for the public to strengthen pro bono participation and to facilitate collaboration on cross-cutting justice issues within a region or nationally and one of the initiatives that we've had an opportunity to be involved in since 2006 is the National Disaster Legal Aid Resource Center which is now a collaboration of Lone Star Legal Aid pro bono net LSE and LADA and the ABA Center for pro bono and that effort is really led today by Sandra Brown at Lone Star Legal Aid and the New Yorkies Disaster Response Legal Fellow here at PBN and I'm going to first talk a little bit about some of our kind of direct observations and learnings in this space after Sandy and then talk about some of the planning resources and kind of capacity building resources that are or will be available through disaster legal aid in the near future. So if we go forward I think we can go ahead two slides. Great. So I wanted to just start with reflecting on some of the learnings from our experience in Superstorm Sandy and in particular some feedback that was surfaced in a report that we had the opportunity to do about two and a half or three years out from Superstorm Sandy that reflected on what worked well and where there were challenges in the legal community's response in New York to that event and I'll go through some findings that I think are particularly interesting when it comes to kind of the role of technology and again that are more about how technology can strengthen collaboration and service delivery among multiple groups working on a response effort and facilitate collaboration. So as part of that that sort of reflection on Sandy we did a survey that of approximately 40 legal services advocates law firm pro bono coordinators and law school collaborators that looked at which of the following tools and resources they engage with as part of their Sandy response efforts and in in the wake of Sandy Law Health New York the statewide legal aid website in New York played a critical role in getting legal information out to the public. The regional pro bono site the NYC Pro Bono Center also was used as the central access point to training and mobilization resources for volunteer attorneys. There also were specific networking mechanisms that were set up in the wake of that event that you can see here were heavily used and relied on so calls that were organized by the City Justice Center that I believe happened bi-weekly for a period of time and a Superstorm Sandy legal response list serve that was set up you know within a matter of a day or two of the event and became the primary vehicle through which a diverse group of advocates collaborated in you know very close-knit ways for a year or more and and even now on some lingering issues from that event. So on the next slide great so we also had the opportunity to ask programs not only what did they use but what did they think were the most successful aspects of the response and where there were challenges and I'm going to focus here in particular on places where there's sort of an intersection with technology. I think Superstorm Sandy this was in 2012 the fall of 2012 when Superstorm Sandy happened and you know that I think there were ways in which technology was very effective and ways in which the community still struggled in maximizing that and I'll talk a little bit more about that later on. You know in particular I think we saw the the role of Law Health New York and the really for the first time in our experience a really strong use of social media and digital marketing and digital outreach to get information out to the public in effective communities as being an area where the legal community's response really shown and was very impactful in its use of technology as well as standing up tools like the listserv or a central clearinghouse of resources for advocates in facilitating collaboration across organizations and helping to bring together subject matter expertise from a number of different groups and capturing that in one place that multiple organizations and multiple volunteers regardless of what program they were volunteering with could have access to. Where we saw and heard some of the least successful aspects of the response were in some areas around the use of technology collaboration with government agencies which was not a tech issue but more about engagement with groups like FEMA or some of the city or state agencies that were involved in a response and then around volunteer management and volunteer recruitment and I think we'll talk a little bit about this later on but I think this is a place where the capacity of the community and the experience of the community nationally has grown in thinking about how do you use technology to capture what is often a surge in interest among volunteers and assisting in a disaster and then actually deploy and leverage that over what can sometimes be a quite long period of time in which those volunteers are actually needed. And there were I think ways in which training volunteers and capturing the interest of volunteers in the wake of Sandy was very successful and that was facilitated through the use of technology but actually then keeping those volunteers engaged and deploying them over a matter of months or years in some cases was harder. So on the next slide we also had the opportunity to ask groups looking ahead what would be the ideal elements of a sort of sustained regional disaster response network that would encompass New York and New Jersey. And you'll notice that many of these elements, many of what we heard have intersections with technology. So people expressed interest in having a centralized database of New York attorneys that has expertise in disaster related areas, disaster response plans that are sort of channeled through different work streams and have different roles and specific asks of different organizations, online and printable forms and documents, generic trainings that could be hosted online, kind of a permanent collection of disaster response resources that would be available in the wake of another event, a predefined volunteer management strategy. Again, this was looking at this through the lens, not of one particular organization, but how a network of advocates and organizations across the city and across Northern New Jersey would would work together on a volunteer recruitment and management strategy in the wake of an event. And then kind of meetings or drills or exercises to sort of keep keep the learnings fresh. And on the next slide, as part of this report, we had the opportunity to make some specific recommendations about what that would look like and where technology could be could be leveraged for that in terms of maintaining the listserv as an ongoing resource and archive for advocates that worked on this issue, identifying a cadre of subject matter experts that would help to maintain and expand the resources that had been curated for advocates and housed on the regional pro bono net site in New York, ongoing sort of meetings and events convenings to help share best practices and refresh information as there may be turnover or new experience sort of brought to bear on this, continuing to leverage the resources that are available on disaster legal aid, and then kind of formalizing this idea of a network that might span New York and New Jersey. So some of these learnings will on the next slide, some of these learnings were sort of resurfaced and brought to bear in a new document that the New York City Bar Association and the pro bono and legal services committee of New York took the lead on developing and that was released in June 2018 that I would really encourage people to read. There's a link to it further down in the presentation. But it kind of took the experience of Superstorm Sandy and other rapid response efforts that were led in the wake of kind of large scale policy changes in New York and kind of took those efforts and looked at what would a rapid response protocol and framework for collaboration look like across various groups that have a stake in a meaningful and just response to these kinds of events. And it's a really thoughtful and I think creative and forward looking document, but it talks about the key elements of a rapid response being collaboration, leadership and clearly defined roles, and then marshaling of a wide variety of resources including technology from across organizations. And on the next slide, one of the really interesting things that they did in developing this rapid response protocol was sort of define five coordinator roles that would form the leadership team of a rapid response effort in kind of the New York City area. And it was envisioned that these wouldn't necessarily be one person, but one person who would kind of take the lead on convening and driving activities in each of these areas and helping to facilitate collaboration among providers. And one of the roles that was envisioned is a technology coordinator. And the role for that person or the entity that might be playing that role is spelled out on the right. But I love their articulation of this as the technology coordinator and helping to provide kind of the central nervous system for communication, volunteer management and messaging to the service provider collaborators and the public. So if you are working on a disaster response plan with within your regional or state justice community and are thinking about how do we sort of carve out roles for technologists and the role for a meaningful role for kind of technology and recognizing the need for coordination around technology, this plan would be a great resource to take a look at and leverage. So on the next slide, I again wanted to highlight here sort of zooming out from Superstorm Sandy and generalizing pro bononets experience and some of the learning that our field partners have shared with us in their work in using technology to deploy a more effective and more efficient response or sort of build resilience for these events in the future. I wanted to highlight sort of an anatomy of some technology capacities that programs may want to take into consideration. Again, not necessarily for their individual disaster response and disaster resilience plan for their organization, but for their community justice community as a whole. So some of the elements include a designated hotline and intake channels with contingency plans. If the lead program or program that is envisioned as the host for that is directly impacted, centralized resources and sign up information for pro bono volunteers, ideally with the ability to screen, manage and distribute volunteer capacity where it's needed most. I think sort of across many of the events that we've seen in the last few years and going back before that, their places again where that remains challenging I think for very good reasons, but where technology, smart applications of technology can really play a critical role. Having identified ahead of time an authoritative source, centralized source with information for the public in the wake of a disaster, including know your rights resources, a calendar of clinics and referrals to direct service providers. There are many good nationally relevant resources available on disaster legal aid as well as that have been developed for statewide legal aid websites in regions that have been impacted by disasters. So if you need suggestions, if you're trying to kind of develop a core kind of content base in your community and are looking for suggestions about where to turn for models, please let me know. There's some really great examples out there. And you'll want to consider translation needs in advance. We also have seen in states that already had a live help initiative that that initiative often can play a critical information and referral finding role in the wake of a disaster. And there have been a couple of justice communities including Louisiana and Texas that actually started their live help initiatives in the wake of Katrina and in the wake in Louisiana and in the wake of Hurricane Rita in Texas that actually with the impetus to stand up a live help project that then became a permanent part of their statewide website ecosystem. And then plan and advance for for social media and digital marketing strategies for the resources that you're looking to make available through the public, which might include dedicated URLs, taking people to specific pages of websites with know your rights resources, the use of Google AdWords and social media in the wake of the California wildfires last fall. I live in the San Francisco Bay Area and I'm part of the Bay Area legal services group that has been working on disaster response for several years. We noticed how quickly kind of for profit legal services providers, many of which were sort of swooping in from out of state, how quickly they got their own Google AdWords campaigns stood up and their own digital marketing campaigns stood up and that we were somewhat under prepared for that in the Bay Area and to kind of compete with that in terms of the visibility that we were looking for for the online resources for the public that we and referral resources and access to free legal assistance tools that we wanted to make available. On the next slide, a few other elements again of a statewide or regional disaster plan, the kinds of listserv and networking tools that we heard were so effective and sandy. The I think it's worth considering whether there's a need for a centralized resource that might be password protected, if appropriate with resources and tools that are specifically for practitioners that might include your state or region's disaster legal services manual training and webinar materials and sample forms and pleadings. Increasingly we're seeing programs use tools to facilitate remote and unbundled legal services or remote pro bono engagement in disaster response and then really thinking through who within your community or who within your organization can be a lead as sort of a social media strategist and digital marketing strategist, including somebody who is appointed not only to push information out, but to listen for what kinds of needs might be might be popping up in the community or what kinds of informal grassroots response efforts might be happening that the legal services, the sort of formal legal services communities should be aware of and get connected with. So I'll just wrap up here with some on the next slide, some resources that are available to support these kinds of planning efforts, resources that are available through the National Disaster Legal Aid Resource Center, again, which is a long time collaboration of Lone Star, Pro Bono Net, LSC, NLADA and the ABA. As of August 2018, the National Disaster Legal Aid also includes a new advocacy center with specialized resources and tools for practitioners working nationally in this space. So if you're not already a member of the advocacy center, I would encourage you to go there and get signed up, join the listserv and take a look at some of the tools there. Next slide. But there's a really wonderful set of disaster planning resources and models that have been made available by other programs who are willing to kind of share their hard one expertise in this area that include a disaster checklist for legal services programs, a great example of a statewide justice community technology plan out of Louisiana and a nice example of an organizational plan or recommended plan that was produced by the State Bar of California along with other disaster planning resources, some of which come from just tech. I also wanted to highlight here an insight that communications director at Lone Star Legal Aid shared with me recently was the importance of having staff who are in a kind of public-facing outreach role trained in crisis communications and there have been some good crisis communication trainings that have been produced by groups like 2-1-1 and voices for civil justice just produced a training at the NLADA workshop on this topic as well. Next slide. In terms of resources to, online resources to support effective volunteer mobilization and help to both get volunteers up to speed more quickly and keep them engaged. There are a number of kind of best-in-class disaster assistance manuals available on Disaster Legal Aid. In the new Advocacy Center there's also a FEMA appeals brief bank and trainings that are organized by topic. LSE has produced a great set of starter videos on disaster counseling issues. I've linked here to the New York Rapid Response Protocol that I touched on earlier and also wanted to highlight a startup kit that legal services of NYC developed in the wake of Sandy that documents how they deployed a Salesforce-based volunteer management system to build their capacity to recruit and mobilize volunteers on behalf of legal services NYC in the wake of, in the event of a future disaster, but it also looks at how this system could be used to facilitate a kind of multi-program volunteer recruitment and mobilization strategy. So even if you're not using Salesforce, some of the design principles and protocols that LSE documented in that startup kit, I think are worth looking at to think about how you create specific roles and think about creating policies and other kinds of a framework to facilitate a kind of collaborative volunteer mobilization strategy. In the next slide, I think I've touched on most of these resources available on disaster legal aid already, but again, if you're not already plugged into the listserv or a member of the Advocacy Center, we would encourage you to join that, to be able to access and take advantage of these resources. Next slide. Sandra Brown and Jeannie also have led the production of a national roundtable series this year focusing on disaster response issues, and when we first started these, we thought there would be sort of small tables, intimate gatherings of maybe 10 or 20 advocates kind of coming together. What we found is some of these have drawn, you know, upwards of 100 attendees from many different states and jurisdictions that have been impacted by disasters. And the next topic and the one that we'll kind of close out the year on will be at the end of November focusing on disability rights issues in disaster legal response, one of the most kind of requested topics that's come up in our conversations and feedback from attendees in this series. And on the next slide, as we look ahead to this coming year, we through an LST funded partnership with Lone Star Legal Aid, we will have the opportunity to expand some of the resources available on disaster legal aid, including additional roundtables on topics that we hope will include the effective use of technology and service delivery and being able to learn more and have deeper conversations about some of the kinds of creative, forward looking, resilience focused strategies that people like WAN and groups like Cerviceos Legales are leading. And we'd welcome feedback on what topics would be helpful for the community to hear about and discuss in those kinds of roundtables. We also will be developing a toolkit to help support remote pro bono mobilization on FEMA appeals issues, leveraging an existing will help interactive powered FEMA appeals online interview. We also will be developing new technology capacities and points of integration with case management systems to support the cross publishing of pro bono opportunities in need in disaster response context and being able to amplify those regionally or nationally and then a series of mobile friendly user experience design and content updates. And we're in the early stages of planning this and really welcome feedback from this community on how any of these or other national capacity can be helpful as you think about both responding to events that may be happening in your regions or as you look ahead to planning and building more resilient strategies for the future. So I think that's it. Thank you. Well, thank you, Liz. That was a wealth of information. I hope others found it helpful as well. Obviously a lot to cover. I think, you know, one of the highlights here is you have to you have to start the conversation internally if you have not already. I think for most, if not all, you know, disaster is really about when versus if and the more planning and discussion that you could have beforehand, the better versus being in an actual disaster and trying to then figure out everything. I think in one's case, it sounded like they had already, you know, started to implement some things, some things with extreme. So that sort of helped. But obviously then, you know, going through additional disasters, it just is highlighted more about what needs to be done and building in some of that resiliency in the time of need because, you know, the clients do need the services, you know, potentially more than ever depending upon what type of disaster it is. So really, you know, emphasize having these conversations. This list provided a great resources, LSN TAP. I think, you know, hopefully everyone on the call knows that distribution list is great. I mean, you just throw out a question. In my book, there's no stupid questions. I think, you know, throw it out there and you'll get responses, you know, sometimes fewer than others. But depending upon the topic, you know, there's just a wealth of information and a number of people out there just willing to help in any way that they can. So, you know, if you haven't already, you know, start to have those conversations internally and start planning on what you could do, think about forming a committee. You know, I think, you know, some people, you know, in terms of a disaster, don't think, you know, the situation like that one brought up, you know, payroll, how does payroll get done? You know, sometimes we're focused on the communications piece and making sure the clients are getting serviced. But internally, things don't have to move, people need to get paid. So, you know, having people on a committee, I think helps an organization sort of think about all points that need to be thought about. With that said, I did want to leave some time for questions. Everyone is muted or was muted, but if you have a question, we'd be more than happy to hear and answer to the best of our ability. So, if you have a question, please unmute yourself and ask a question regarding our live lives. The supply lives will be available. It sounds like exactly, let me get into that. The site can be available on our website. And we did add them into the handout section, but since they were added partway into the webinar, they may not appear for some people for download. Also, feel free to email us and we can send you the slides. Michael does have those, and I also have those over at Ellis & Toe. Thank you, sir. Any questions? With regards to the mobile station that was set up, what was kind of the cost around that? Excellent. Welcome back. Where's the question again? It was what was the cost to that kind of mobile office station that you put together? Yeah, it's around, I think it was about 2,800. That's not bad, not bad at all. Yeah, it was, it was a, that surface, by the way, it has one of the, it's one of the newer ones that have a built in eSim. So, the scene that we were thinking about that, it was like we can actually get a few, we can actually get the eSim online and we don't have to worry about getting a sim for those laptops. You can actually, you know, trying to get those sim, in the, in the surface you can actually connect to a provider and get the sim activated without actually going to a location, a provider, go, physically go and get the sim and that's the reason we got those and that's a little bit more expensive, but we're looking like down the line when that service is available and we actually, people can actually, you know, we can give permission to, to actually get a sim when they need it so they can actually, instead of carrying a hotspot, you know, with them. The other thing that that is in that system is like the, there's a gold zero battery, which is about 100 watts, that comes with the panel. So the whole thing, I mean, the whole idea was, is that while you're doing service, you can actually get the battery being recharged and then now you can go back and recharge your equipment. And those 100 watts batteries, those are lithium batteries, by the way. And I think the whole thing weights less than 30 pounds, I mean, the whole thing. That's great. Liz, the kind of social media marketing outreach that you talked about after a disaster, what, what kind of like task items were on that or what things were people kind of doing on a daily basis? Because you talked kind of about internal and external there. And I know that that's very new to a lot of legal services organizations, is some of them don't have anyone even managing social media currently. Great. That's a great question, Brian. Thanks. So and Law Health New York actually produced a guide, I believe it was in 2013 or 2014 on the use of social media and disaster response. And while the social media ecosystem and world has, you know, obviously evolved since then, it is some of those just fundamental principles and practices might be helpful for people to take a look at. But the kind of building blocks of, you know, what we've seen be effective are use of Twitter and Facebook and blogs for outreach in Superstorm Sandy. Most of those were done in both English and Spanish and included information, a focus on information that was sort of time sensitive. So, you know, there's a clinic happening in Staten Island on Thursday or there's an upcoming deadline for FEMA appeals sort of time sensitive quick information that was used and, you know, broadcast kind of repeatedly through social media and then amplified through the network of partner organizations that were involved in the disaster response efforts. I know I just presented at NLADA on a panel with two with Sandra Brown and Claire Sayala, the director of communications from Lone Star Legal Aid, and they actually talked about doing Facebook Live events, you know, that had, I think in one case, several thousand people watching essentially a know your rights training that was done through through Facebook Live and also through social media sort of listening and being responsive to social media and they were able to identify needs within local communities that turned into fairly high profile cases and actions that Lone Star was able to take action on. So, you know, both the sort of outreach and marketing piece as well as the listening and engagement and thinking about ways social media, especially in a relatively chaotic situation, can help create, can help establish bridges with either clients who need assistance or other organizations that are working in an allied way in that disaster response work. I definitely, and I would just emphasize my comment earlier that also thinking about AdWords and, you know, some budget for paid digital marketing strategy, whether that's sponsored ads on Facebook or or even, you know, buying Google AdWords, because at least in, you know, California, which is Northern California, very kind of competitive legal services landscape with a lot of for-profit players, we were, it was really noticeable, you know, Californiafirelawyers.com was within days, like the top, I think, both maybe search result, but also definitely in kind of the paid AdWords listings. And, you know, I think thinking in thinking about ways that that paid digital marketing can help the legal aid community compete with and maintain a commensurate presence with the kinds of free and low cost resources that it's making available. Great, and especially given that there's AdWord money available for free for nonprofits, if that's just set up in advance and people already know how to use it, much better situation. Excellent, I think that covers our questions. Thank you so much, Michael Hernandez. I would definitely like to remind people we have the new request for proposal and job board. So if you decide to hire somebody who's going to do social media in disasters, please send us an email. We will post that and share that widely. Additionally, this video should be up within a week on our YouTube channel. We're almost at 1,000 subscribers there. So we appreciate having you as a subscriber. There are comment features there, and we do monitor those. So if you have any questions about any of the resources that are there, we can get you additional information. Thank you, Just TAC. Thank you. I'm all of the speakers that we had today. This was a great topic. Look forward to helping organizations prepare for disasters.