Shelter services. One team developed a system to register and track people in shelters. This was not straightforward, since shelters were created in multiple locations (schools, churches, hotels and public buildings) and opened and closed in response to changing demands. Intel and Cisco led the team that donated and installed a standard communications kit at each site, including PCs, VoIP phones, wiring and supporting infrastructure. These kits served as phone banks and computer centers for each shelter, enabling survivors to communicate with family members.

Financial assistance. Normally, the Red Cross sends response teams into disaster areas to physically give debit cards to victims, but the devastation wrought by Katrina precluded this approach. Instead, the financial assistance team, led by Avaya and SBC , constructed a California call center where survivors could register and have funds wire-transferred to a Western Union office. The 400-seat call center was created in one week and handled a large call volume daily.

The "Family linking" information database. More than 50 uncoordinated Web sites sprang up after Katrina in an effort to identify victims and reunite families. Microsoft , Yahoo and Google worked together to develop a system to crawl the Web to search these sites. Then they created a central repository, KatrinaSafe.org, to enable family members to connect with one another. IBM and the San Diego Supercomputer Center developed the sites's back-end matching program to remove redundancies and make the remaining entries as unambiguous as possible.

Infrastructure. This team provided the technology underpinnings that enabled the other teams to operate effectively. It expanded the network capacity of the Red Cross by 400% in two days, enabling effective communication among volunteers, suppliers, shelters, and Red Cross field operations and headquarters. Additional efforts expanded existing Red Cross systems to collect contributions and register and screen volunteers.

For a month, these multicompany IT teams worked long hours to help the victims. Fortunately, each of the companies involved had executive management that actively supported the projects. This enabled the various teams to divert their companies' goods and services to the relief efforts without red tape. (For team reports and photos, visit www.wirelessfort.net/blog and http://spaces.msn.com/members/edfaulkner.)