Distributed Rescue

a model

Hard for me to see all of this clearly from the other side of the country, but a theme developed quickly on social media after the hurricane:

1. I’ve got a helicopter, who needs help?

2. Landing pad in this location, people need help here.

Immediately, random people started throwing food and water into their trucks and hauling ass to the disaster zone. Immediately, private aid groups moved to provide well-coordinated help. Immediately, NASCAR drivers flooded the zone with their own helicopters, freelance hunting for people in need. And immediately, people began to coordinate aid through direct non-governmental communication, especially as small groups of private actors distributed Starlink terminals to areas without phone and Internet service.

Go hunt around on social media. There are thousands of my elderly parents are trapped on the hillside in [town name] and I can’t reach them, can anyone get to them? messages on social media — with responses. Found your parents, got food to them, they’re okay.

And so, predictably:

There are many reports like this one:

While serious military assets sit unused and nearby, well into the disaster, little groups of neighbors are going hard at the problem.

This is not an argument that government is invariably useless. See, for example:

But the exception proves the rule, as Florida rushes much-needed aid to North Carolina. Watching the debate last night, and seeing the disaster of Beltway journalists asking vapid questions about their boutique concerns — why don’t we have European-style paid family leave? — I was forced to the conclusion that help isn’t coming, in a very general sense.

No one in the American green zone knows what to begin discussing, much less doing. Wars metastasizing, ports closed, communities flooded. Did Margaret Brennan and Norah What’s-her-name appear to notice any of that?

Friends and neighbors will have to do.