Disaster Recovery
Paul Coreil
Paul Coreil
Paul Coreil: At the end of the day, trust is the most important thing in extension. Extension was effective in the United States because of the quality of the extension agents that were hired and the commitment they had to serving the community and improving the quality of life of people. And without trust you're dead in the water. The trust credibility is the value of extension. And that takes . . . that took the 100 years to do. And it's a jewel to this country; particularly when a hurricane hits. And everybody's thankful that when a disaster hits that we have an extension service. With the disciplines we have in extension and on this campus with our Land Grant and Sea Grant mission it was a clear, established, obvious link to me that we could be quickly part of this solution for the state, of the biggest disaster we've ever faced [Hurricane Katrina]. And we began working on that. We had to develop a volunteer management system for New Orleans. People were coming in from all over the country. And our Sea Grant and extension and Land Grant agents had to manage our volunteers and deploy them where they could do the most good. A lot of students came from other universities. The governor's office, Department of Agriculture, Wildlife and Fisheries; we coordinated our work through them. You know, it was something as basic as "Can I plant a crop where salt water has been?" to "How do I clean this black mold in my house?" "Can I drink the water out of my water well?" Just simple things that have to be answered that we can immediately deploy. Now one thing that we learned though: the internet don't work in a disaster, cell phones don't work during a disaster. So we understood that and we had to go back to the basics. We had to print information and deliver it to the people.