Coordinating a cross-org response during an emergency

When a National Weather Service emergency is declared in your region — a hurricane warning, a flash flood emergency, a wildfire evacuation order — Mutual Aid shifts into emergency-response mode automatically. Chargeback fees waive, eligible orgs in the affected area get a banner notification, and matching priorities re-tune for survival-critical categories. This article walks through what happens and how to coordinate from the response side.

What triggers emergency mode:

Mutual Aid subscribes to the NWS Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) feed and to FEMA's IPAWS feed. When a declared emergency reaches a threshold severity (Warning / Emergency / Extreme) and is geo-scoped to a region, the platform:

1. Marks an `emergencyDeclaration` record with the source event, geo polygon, start time, and projected end time.
2. Waives Mutual Aid chargeback fees for any org whose address falls within the polygon.
3. Surfaces a banner across affected orgs' Mutual Aid surfaces ("NWS Hurricane Warning is active in your area — emergency-response mode is on").
4. Boosts matching weight for survival-critical categories: shelter beds, water, food, medical, transportation, generators, fuel.

What you do when emergency mode is on:

**If your org has resources to offer:**

1. Open /mutual-aid → "Post offer."
2. Pick the category — shelter beds, meals, water, medical supplies, generators, etc.
3. Quantity and time window — "200 shelter beds available 6 PM tonight through 8 AM Wednesday."
4. Constraints — pet-friendly? ADA accessible? Medical needs supported?
5. Location and pickup/drop-off logistics.
6. Submit. The offer goes live to every emergency-eligible org in the affected region within seconds.

**If your org needs help:**

1. Open /mutual-aid → "Post request."
2. Pick the category. Mark severity (urgent / standard / planning).
3. Quantity and time window.
4. Recipient constraints (privacy mode: aggregate count only vs. individual names if you have consent).
5. Submit. Wally suggests matches from active offers within minutes.

**If your org is the response coordinator** (county EM office, Red Cross chapter, mayor's office on Turtini):

1. Open /mutual-aid → "Coordinator dashboard" (visible to orgs you flag as response coordinators).
2. See all offers and requests in the affected region in one view, with map.
3. Flag duplicates, surface gaps (categories with requests but no offers), broadcast targeted asks.
4. Once the emergency winds down, mark it resolved; chargeback waiver ends; the dashboard archives.

What changes automatically:

- **No transaction fees** on Mutual Aid activity for the duration of the declaration.
- **Higher-priority matching** for survival categories.
- **Cross-org messaging boosted** so coordination chat threads sit above non-emergency Wally tickets.
- **Volunteer hour tracking** opens — labor offers (you have 20 volunteers free Tuesday) match with labor requests (we need 15 to staff a shelter Tuesday).
- **The platform's status banner** at the top of every Mutual Aid page reads "EMERGENCY MODE ACTIVE — fees waived through {projected end time}."

After the emergency:

- All offers and requests are archived as a coordination record.
- Match outcomes (was the offer fulfilled? was the request met?) are tracked for an after-action report (the coordinator dashboard generates a PDF).
- Chargeback fees resume normal rates 24 hours after the NWS declaration is lifted (the buffer accounts for late activity that's still emergency-related).

Tips for orgs already in the Mutual Aid network:

- **Pre-stage your org profile** — be sure your address, primary contact, and resource categories are accurate so emergency matching works the second a declaration lands. Updating these mid-emergency is fine but slower.
- **Designate an emergency-mode contact** — a phone number that's monitored even when normal office hours don't apply.
- **Test before the storm** — post a low-stakes test offer during a non-emergency to verify your org's Mutual Aid setup. Better to discover a misconfigured workflow on a quiet Tuesday.

Related: see [project_mutual_aid] for the architectural design (cross-org coordination layer, 11 categories, tiered privacy).