The Internet didn't create the outpouring of citizen-to-citizen care that has so often beaten traditional relief agencies like the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Red Cross to Hurricane Sandy-ravaged communities all over the tri-state area - but it certainly helped to channel it. The rise of grassroots organizing channeled through online resources in times of crisis has been so profound that FEMA and the Red Cross aren't even pretending they can do a better job than web-adept citizens groups like Occupy Sandy when it comes to immediately moving people or supplies - or even that they are supposed to. Read More

In Hurricane Sandy's wake, many developers have come up with websites or applications created to help. But when volunteers are on the ground in hard-hit areas like the Rockaways section of New York City, they are often unable to access the Internet or use their mobile phones. A group of volunteers have responded to this challenge by developing Occupy SMS, a text-messaging tool for aid communication. Read More

As the full scope of the disaster wrought by Hurricane Sandy sank in, volunteers in New York and New Jersey dropped everything to help the thousands evacuated from homes that were flooded, freezing and without electricity; many put out urgent calls for supplies and volunteers on Facebook, but their posts failed to reach a wide audience because the social media site did not suspend its fees for promoting posts — even as the New York Times and Wall Street Journal lowered their paywall in order to give people in the disaster-struck region access to information. Read More

Has New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg, who has steered his city in all kinds of admirable ways since Hurricane Sandy first appeared on the horizon a week ago, seriously misread the mood of his fellow Gothamites with his decision to let the annual New York City Marathon proceed as scheduled this Sunday? The race, which draws between 40,000 and 60,000 runners each year, is the largest in the world--and judging from some fast-moving page on Change.org and Facebook, many people are wondering if the usually uplifting event may put too heavy a burden on already strained and breaking city services. Read More

With millions of residents of the New York-New Jersey-Connecticut tri-state area without power since Superstorm Sandy swept through the region Monday, a complete picture of the devastation and loss remains out of reach. But radio, especially the two-way, interactive, crowd-sourced journalism practiced by WNYC's Brian Lehrer, is helping filling in the gaps. Read More

The city releases data on 311 calls on its open data portal every afternoon between 2 and 3 p.m. This afternoon, that data release included calls placed Monday and early Tuesday as Hurricane Sandy whipped up floodwaters, shut off power and blew over trees throughout the city. The data paint a sobering picture of the damage. Arranged by complaint type, New Yorkers as of early Tuesday had placed 5,102 reports of damaged trees, warned of malfunctioning traffic signals 1,074 times, notified the city in 642 instances of an overflowing or otherwise broken sewer drain, and complained of broken street lights 325 times. That's just the bulk of 8,564 reports placed between Sunday and Tuesday for which data is available. It's likely that later data releases will raise that number even higher. Read More