Filling the gaps: the potential and limitations of emergent, ICT-enabled organisation in disaster – a case study of the Cajun Army

ABSTRACT

Most recent research on unaffiliated volunteers in disasters has focused on coordination, integration, and management of labour itself. A less prominent line of research focuses on qualities emergent groups of unaffiliated volunteers can contribute to emergency response or recovery that official organisations may be less equipped to provide, including: organisational agility, flexible problem-solving, and early access to technological expertise and innovation, especially in the domain of information and communication technology (ICT). During recent hurricanes and floods in coastal Louisiana and Texas, groups such as the Cajun Navy utilised Zello – an agile variation of Short Message Service (SMS) that converts a cellphone into a universal walkie talkie – to coordinate emergency response and recovery for disaster victims. This paper analyses the emergence of the volunteer-based ‘Cajun Army’ and its bricoleur-like assemblage of ICT applications like Zello, Facebook, and other media to recruit and coordinate volunteers, manage the recovery needs of disaster victims, and deploy resources in the field. The Cajun Army case study serves as an example of how technological innovation is improvised by the emergent voluntary sector in the midst of crises and can be stabilised for repeated contributions to emergency management.

KEYWORDS:

• Spontaneous volunteers
• collective intelligence
• innovation
• information and communication technology

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 According to our interviewees, the Cajun Nation was formed at a meeting in 2016 at John Schneider Studios in Holden, Louisiana. Schneider, an actor famous for his role as Bo Duke in the television show ‘Dukes of Hazzard,’ had had his home and studio flooded, and graciously hosted the meeting of ‘Cajun’ groups.

2 Nicholas and Joshua Loupe from Morgan City are the other two founding members of the Cajun Army.

3 Allegations of misuse of funds over the years have occurred amongst various offshoots of Cajun volunteer organisations (The Advocate, 2018) and against Occupy Sandy (West, 2013).

4 As King described on several occasions, businesses played a key role. Donations by businesses were not merely expressions of corporate social responsibility but in the interest of the long-term economic recovery: ‘Businesses should want to get the community back up and functioning ASAP so people can start spending money again to stimulate the economy.’

5 The Cajun Army has now shifted from ServiceNow to using Airtable for their registration needs.

6 A similar approach was also used by the Occupy Sandy movement in 2012 (Garber, 2012).

7 An example of an early large-scale coordination of donations was how on 1 October 2016, the group leveraged a donation of 10,000 pounds of chicken to provide meals to 20,000 flood victims in Baton Rouge.

8 Among the rank and file team members not everyone uses Zello (around 20% are not considered ‘tech savvy’), but these volunteers usually pair off with others who are.

9 Although their social media coordinator attempted to use Instagram, it was difficult to get photos from the field sites to use on a regular basis. Captain Morgan said:

Volunteers were out gutting homes in extreme conditions and for long hours. By the time they finished, returned to base, cleaned up & ate … they were heading to bed. It just wasn’t an effective tool for us. Also, you do need to be savvy with the creation, tagging and use of hashtags – we just didn’t have the time to invest in that endeavor.

10 As the Cajun Army has expanded their operations outside of Louisiana however, they have found that there is more relationship-building that needs to occur to develop trust amongst impacted communities. To accomplish this after Hurricane Harvey, they have deployed small reconnaissance teams to visit primarily small-town churches in Texas to make people aware of what they’re doing. When they develop partnerships on the ground, their counterparts at the churches help direct their networks to the Facebook and ServiceNow pages to get more information and sign up.

11 One Facebook poster explained to North Carolinian residents as the Cajun Army was moving in that the organisation was formed, like the Cajun Navy, ‘when the government failed Louisiana.’