When fire tore through dry terrain and down into unsuspecting neighborhoods of the Los Angeles area early this year, the state launched an unprecedented digital response to help survivors piece their lives back together.
Normally, when a disaster of this magnitude strikes, displaced residents are forced to navigate an auditorium full of government agencies and nonprofits in the hopes of replacing the documents necessary to begin rebuilding their lives.
“We defined this as like a second trauma and trying to navigate government and get help,” Office of Data and Innovation (ODI) Service Innovation Deputy Director Koji Kumpulainien said during the Government Innovation Summit* in Sacramento last week.
The L.A. fires were a pivot point for state emergency response, shifting focus from the standard auditorium approach to a digital approach that gives affected residents access to the services they need in one online location.
But this isn’t a one-off, and officials say the model will be used to respond to the next disaster, be that a wildfire, earthquake or other natural or man-made calamity. Officials said this sort of digital response will be commonplace going forward.
In the case of the L.A. fires, technologists from ODI, the Government Operations Agency (GovOps), the California Department of Technology (CDT) and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) were on the ground to help streamline access to vital information and resources.
“For disaster recovery, a lot of our research showed that there's no one user journey, every disaster is unique, and then everyone's path is different on their recovery from disaster,” Kumpulainien said. “There's a lot to navigate there and a lot of places that we have to break down those government silos in order to be able to provide the information that people need. So, we're doing that.”
CDT Deputy Chief Technology Innovation Officer Blaine Wasylkiw said one of the key factors working in their favor was the use of the ca.gov website, which allowed for a more rapid deployment of real-time information through a secure portal that was already familiar to the general public.
“It wasn't as easy as flipping a switch, but we had the platform we could jump right into; so that was huge,” he said.
One foundational piece of this work was CAL FIRE’s incident mapping portal, which shows real-time burn and evacuation data. That data helped to round out other aspects of the digital response.
“Data from disasters informs the good work that these gentlemen are doing. It originates with CAL FIRE; it may originate with [the Department of Water Resources] DWR next time — winter's coming — it may originate somewhere else,” CAL FIRE Deputy Director of Technology Scott Gregory said. “But the key is data and making those relationships happen. The technology exists to do all of this, we’ve just got to get out of our way, sometimes.”
While the multidepartment team was working on informing affected residents, outside forces were trying to cripple these efforts. Gregory noted that ISIS-inspired hackers were attempting to mount a distributed denial of service attack against state portals.
“They took a disaster event with the potential for a mass casualty event and took advantage of it by trying to cause additional chaos,” Gregory said. “And that's something that in the playbooks of the future we have got to really home in and focus on, is the cyber aspect of the natural disaster.”
The team was recognized for its efforts during the Best of California Awards at the summit.
*The Government Innovation Summit was hosted by Government Technology, Industry Insider — California’s sister publication.
How the L.A. Fires Shaped the Future of California's Disaster Response
The devastating Los Angeles wildfires may have destroyed entire neighborhoods, but they were also the foundation for a new and improved digital emergency response protocol.
