Disaster Relief Now From DrupalCon

Michael D. Roden | OpenSource.com | June 3, 2013

In an overnight, grassroots movement, the open source platform Drupal has made an impact in Oklahoma. A group of more than 70 volunteer code sprinters—made up of developers, designers, and sys admins—congregated late Tuesday night at DrupalCon in Portland to create help4ok.org.

The initial movement came on Tuesday afternoon, when Matthew Harmon, FEMA Web Manager, entered several DrupalCon sessions to make an announcement of his intent. Matthew, along with several others, set out with the goal to create an information hub for victims in Moore, OK where 24 people were killed and more than 1,000 homes were damaged or destroyed when the massive tornado swept through Moore and other Oklahoma City suburbs.

As residents are still in the midst of quite literally, picking up the pieces, web activists nearly 2000 miles away were burning the midnight oil. In less than the 24 hours it took to create, the small site with profound implications has been playing an active role in support of disaster relief efforts for tornado victims in Oklahoma.