Gulfport, MS
September 7th, 2005Spoke to Dave Odem, a resource manager over in Gulfport, MS this afternoon. Gulfport’s a neighbor of Biloxi, right on the coast, so there’s no need to belabor describing the state of affairs over there.
He tells me they have 7 or 8 Red Cross-directed shelters, some 3000+ evacuees. Major sections of town are quarantined, because of debris and bodies. “Private entities” are opening shelters (this is a phenomenon all across the region, which includes Baptist churches and even farms) but there are too many to keep track of and they experience a lot of flux.
He’s going to talk with his IT people and his superiors in the administration about our offer to provide free networking with VoIP and web browsing via wireless to these Red Cross facilities. They want to make sure that we’re self-contained enough not to create an additional burden, that we have our own gas, food, ability to shelter ourselves, and that the equipment we set up won’t require a lot of babysitting by their people.
It’s about 250 miles from where we are in Rayville, LA. We’re going to try to get them 10 VoIP phones per shelter, and 2-5 laptops or PCs per. We’re going to need at least ten mesh nodes, but I’m awaiting details on the topology. And the whole thing could be scuttled if we can’t get a backhaul link to the Internet somewhere. WISPs are out of the question ’cause they lost all their towers. Hopefully they have a T1 or DS3 or something live in a city facility. Cross your fingers.