San Diego 211 - Firestorm 2007

Hi Everyone!

I am currently writing this blog with about 6 hours of solid sleep since midnight Wednesday morning. As you may have heard, the fires have been raging in California since Sunday, October 21st. There are tons of pictures on the web but I thought these were incredible: http://www.pixagogo.com/6706394206. These pictures are of the training center taken by Marlon Shirley and distributed by Diana Wright. They show just how close the flames came to the OTC.

As I mentioned on my website, even though I am no longer a part of the Olympic Training Center program, they were very good about accounting for all the whereabouts of the athletes and taking the proper precautions to get people out of the training center in time. Fortunately, the flames did not actually reach the training center and no physical losses were sustained. The air quality is still not good enough to train outdoors.

San Diego residents have been incredible in their responsiveness to the need for volunteers. As the cities news stations reported around the clock, thousands of donations and volunteers showed up to help aid those in need. One of the organizations who needed help was 211. 211 San Diego (www.211sandiego.org) is an information hotline for San Diego County. Before Firestorm 2007, people could dial 211 from their phones and they could ask questions about services offered in and around San Diego County. Overnight it became the hotline for people who needed to know if they were under mandatory evacuation and where they needed to go to get out of harms way.

Because of the mass numbers of evacuees, current reports are saying up to 1 million people were displaced by the fires, 211 needed volunteer reinforcements and so they hooked up with www.volunteersandiego.org to find volunteers to man the phone lines in the 211 headquarters. Qualcomm came in and gave 211 everything they needed, instantly hooking up over 50 new phone lines and some large screen tvs.

It turns out that one of the gals who attends my church is heavily involved with San Diego 211 and she was looking for volunteers. By 2:30pm, I was in the headquarters offering my services as a volunteer coordinator. For the next 6 and a half hours I sat on the phone (we had been given pay as you go cell phones) and started calling the hundreds of volunteers who had signed up on the web. It was INCREDIBLE! There were so many emails that the piles were a couple of feet high. Our goal was to have 50-70 people at the 211 headquarters around the clock, serving 4 hour shifts.

My number one goal was to fill out the volunteer slots for the midnight to 4am and 4am to 8am shifts. People were amazing. I think partially because most people weren't working and because they knew they were needed, hardly anyone said they couldn't do it. I decided that I too would come back at midnight to help out, if I was asking others to do it, why couldn't I?

So there I was at midnight, helping train and direct the new volunteers, many of whom, I'd spoken with on the phone earlier. The phones were ringing off the hook, we had all types of calls; People who were bed-ridden who needed to know what to do if they were evacuated, people in areas where they could see flames outside their kitchen window and needed to know where to go, Army commanders who needed to know what roads were closed so they could get truck loads of supplies to the local shelters. The phones rang off the hook all night, over 1,000 calls an hour. We did the best we could with limited information.

I stayed until 9am that morning, went home to get some sleep then returned again at midnight last night. Fortunately by midnight on Thursday, the phone calls had started to die off, meaning people who needed the information had it for the most part. However, at 7am the phones started going nuts when a press conference announced that 211 would have information on who could return home. I was so impressed with how many people wanted to help, how many people put themselves aside and focused on making a difference.

Please continue to pray for those who were displaced, who lost their homes, and those who are helping to restore order!

Joy