Since the first Red Lion Puerto Rico post, lots of things have happened!
- Hackers for Charity has a direct donation page – Hit the button that says “Support the Puerto Rico Disaster Relief Effort”.
- The towns we are directly supporting are Carlos Perez home town of Toa Alta and Jose Quinones Borrero’s town of Catano & Bayamon.
- And most importantly, every piece of gear, every experience, every misstep, every tip and trick and hack we figure out painfully along the way, is being written up as a recipe, so we have a repeatable cookbook for disasters. And the Information Technology Disaster Relief Center is working with us to use our cookbook, get volunteers from the hacking community, and help Puerto Rico! Sign up now at ITDRC.org!
Recap!
Hackers for Charity, Phantom Rescue, Goal Zero, the Information Technology Disaster Recovery Center, lots of individuals, Red Lion, Noble Markets, and multiple Hacker Conferences are working together to bring back an entire town’s communications and power, allowing First Responders (Police, Fire, EMS) to work with their communities to respond to medical emergencies, fires, and looters. We’re sending FRS/GMRS radios, flashlights and lanterns, solar power generators, USB batteries, and an entire educational infrastructure! We’ve built a code plug for the radios to program them properly, and have emergency frequencies available. (Thanks to Rick Farina!)
We’ve raised over $20,000 dollars for the effort, and this will only cover one town!
News Coverage!
Tim Pool, a fantastic independent journalist, was talking to Scott Lyons and Josh Marpet, of Red Lion, about a breach that happened recently. Scott mentioned the Puerto Rico effort, and Tim was fascinated. He asked if he could do a video about it. Scott agreed, to hopefully spread the word, and raise more money. Here it is!
[embedyt] https:/www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UrWzkpRR3E[/embedyt]
Next steps
We’re in the process of writing up the process, the amazon links, costs, etc, so others can replicate, and this can spread! Hopefully, a preliminary version will be available by tomorrow for people to read, and comment on. Please feel free to comment, to discuss, and to let us know any better ideas or tips, please!!