Disaster Volunteer is an emergency coordination platform built for the worst-case scenario — when cell towers are down, power is out, and official channels are overwhelmed. Licensed amateur radio operators are the backbone of a resilient mesh network, joined by trained volunteers from churches, CERT teams and relief groups, collecting survivor information, coordinating resources, and reuniting families with little more than a smartphone.
Every year, disasters separate families, overwhelm emergency services, and leave survivors without a way to tell loved ones they are alive. Official systems — as good as they are — depend on infrastructure that disasters destroy first.
Disaster Volunteer exists to fill that gap. By putting data collection tools in the hands of ham radio operators already deployed in the field, we create a resilient network that works precisely when everything else fails. Survivor data collected on a ham's phone in a power-out shelter travels by Bluetooth to the next operator, then the next, until it finds an internet connection and reaches families searching from hundreds of miles away.
The inspiration came from disaster after disaster where the same lesson kept repeating. In December 2004 the Indian Ocean tsunami killed an estimated 230,000 people across fourteen countries with no warning system in place — ham operators were among the first to get word out of devastated coastal communities. In 2005 Hurricane Katrina drowned New Orleans, the levees failed, and commercial communications collapsed for days; hams ran emergency nets from car batteries and generators when nothing else worked. In 2017 Hurricane Maria knocked out power, internet, and cell service across Puerto Rico for months — ham operators flew in from the mainland to provide some of the only working links back to the outside world. In 2024 Hurricane Helene flooded the Appalachian mountains; whole communities in western North Carolina were cut off by destroyed roads and FEMA’s response drew sharp public criticism for being too slow and too thin for the scale of the damage.
In every one of these events, ham operators showed up. They had the radios, the training, and the will. What they did not have was a unified digital system for collecting and sharing survivor information across the operators on the ground. Disaster Volunteer is the tool those operators needed: works offline, spreads peer-to-peer between devices, syncs over a local shelter LAN to a Net Control laptop, and reaches the outside world the moment any internet connection appears.
Disaster Volunteer is designed around failure — intentionally. FEMA may not integrate. Law enforcement may not participate. Charities may stick with their own systems. That is all okay. The system works without any of them. Only two things must work: the server infrastructure and the ham operators on the ground. Everything else is a welcome bonus.
They are vetted. The FCC license is not just a piece of paper — it is proof that an operator studied, tested, and demonstrated technical competence to the federal government. It filters out casual participants and identifies people who are serious about communication. They also know not to transmit personal information about the injured to unauthorized people, which matters enormously in a crisis.
They are trained. Ham operators are far more likely to have taken additional emergency preparedness training — ARES, CERT, ICS, SKYWARN. They practice. They run exercises. They know how to operate under pressure. Disaster Volunteer cannot onboard and train people in the middle of a disaster. Pre-registered ham operators are ready before the earthquake hits.
They show up. When the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami devastated fourteen countries, when Hurricane Katrina broke the levees in New Orleans in 2005, when Hurricane Maria knocked Puerto Rico off the grid in 2017, when Hurricane Helene drowned the Appalachian mountains in 2024 — in every one of these events ham operators arrived on scene with their own equipment and their own training, often before any official agency was able to set up. That is the culture. When disaster strikes, hams flock to the scene to help. Disaster Volunteer gives them a modern tool to do it more effectively.
Disaster Volunteer integrates with ARRL ARES practices and follows FEMA START triage standards so operators are working within frameworks they already know. The system complements — not replaces — existing emergency communication protocols.
Trained people are already in your neighborhood. Many churches, CERT teams, the Red Cross and other relief groups have people who are trained and organized for an emergency. Some congregations already assign block captains, people who check on every household on their street after a disaster. Others are ready to help at a shelter or staging area. Those people know their neighbors, and that is exactly the information Disaster Volunteer needs on the worst day.
Volunteers take more vetting. A ham's FCC license is a public, federal record that they studied, tested and qualified. Volunteers don't have that, and Disaster Volunteer holds sensitive information about injured people, missing children and families. So a volunteer's account stays locked until someone above them in their own organization, or a Disaster Volunteer administrator, approves them. Once approved, a volunteer has the same access as a ham operator. If you're a ham too, add your call sign.
Practice before you need it. Nobody can learn a new system in the middle of a disaster. We want volunteers to sign up now and take part in training exercises with their local hams. Practice events in Disaster Volunteer are marked as training, so you can log people, homes and pets for real practice without anything being mistaken for an actual emergency.
Organizations: tell us who should approve your volunteers, and we'll set them up. Write to sysop.disastervolunteer@gmail.com.
Disaster Volunteer is free for everyone. Donations help keep the servers running, fund cloud emergency capacity, and support ongoing development.
Disaster Volunteer is designed, developed, and operated by Logan Computers — a technology services company based in Logan, Utah. Built by a licensed ham operator, for the ham radio community.