We have been fielding requests from the Emergency Operations Centers in the impacted counties in Southwest Florida. Wakefield Brunswick resources provided are volunteer and covered by our incident response team budget. We provide ESF-8 EOC support and coordinate resources such as supplementing staffing and resource needs to impacted healthcare providers.
The Field Innovation Team (FIT) is our non-profit partner providing coordination and communication for support of ESF 6. The team has extensive experience with donations management, volunteers, and shelter operations.
Together with our partner, Everything Lifesaving [a minority, disable, veteran-owned company], we were staged in Ft. Myers Angela Devlen [Founder, WB], Desi Matel-Andersen [Founder, FIT] and Paul Herrera [Founder, Everything Lifesaving] gathered to conduct a field assessment and meet with those requesting our support.
From left: Paul Herrera [Founder, Everything Lifesaving], Angela Devlen [Founder, WB] and Desi Matel-Andersen [Founder, FIT].
One of the challenges in a disaster, particularly one of this scale, is the scarcity of resources and accommodations for residents. Naturally, this is also true for those entering the area to provide services and disaster relief. For this reason and to avoid taking any available resources from residents, we aim to be entirely self-sufficient.
Everything Livesaving allows the staging area to have mobile accommodations, our own food [e.g. MREs], refrigeration, generators, solar batteries, water filtration, and internet access. Though there has been an extraordinary effort by utility workers to rapidly bring power, the image shows how our staging area was the only area with light for miles.
Staging area [photo credit: Paul Herrera] and Paul, Angela + Desi
For the past 10 days our collective efforts have included:
Drone Operations for Search + Rescue and Damage Assessments
Rapid Donations Management Set Up + Operations
Supporting Community-Led Shelter Operations
Assessing Resource/Mapping Needs
Staging and Deployment of Resources [out of Tampa, provisioned locally and nationally]
Mobilizing mutual aid and volunteers in Tampa
We continue to remain on stand-by for providing volunteer Healthcare Emergency Managers and Hospital Staffing where necessary.
EOCs and Healthcare organizations impacted by Hurricane Ian with resource requests, email us at response@wakefieldbrunswick.com.
WE WILL CONTINUE TO TRY TO PROVIDE REGULAR UPDATES REGARDING OUR HURRICANE IAN RESPONSE AND WAYS THAT YOU CAN SUPPORT OUR EFFORTS.
Visit our Hurricane Ian Response page for more information and to read past updates.
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