ReliefPoint Background

A look back… a leap forward.

The idea behind ReliefPoint stems back to October, 2007 when wildfires consumed Southern California. More than 500,000 people were evacuated from their homes in San Diego County alone. Major highways were closed as fires spread ferociously. Information about evacuation routes, shelters, and road closures changed by the minute.

211 San Diego was immediate in its response. And yet, the volume of phone calls and number of hits to its Website began to take a toll on its technology infrastructure. 211 San Diego reached out to Pangea Foundation™, a San Diego-based nonprofit Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) provider for help. Pangea Foundation volunteered people and resources to create a Web-based SaaS solution to help 211 San Diego and its 1,200 volunteers communicate real-time relief information to people affected by the fires.

Following the fires, thanks to the generous funding from Qualcomm®, Pangea Foundation, and the County of San Diego, a commitment was made to empower disaster services organizations nationwide with enterprise-class software to help them meet the demands of future disasters. Incorporating lessons learned from the fires, ReliefPoint was born. 

In 2008, ReliefPoint empowered disaster services organizations across America to accelerate relief coordination during the Midwest floods, Hurricane Gustav, and Hurricane Ike.

In 2009, ReliefPoint was leveraged to facilitate relief coordination during the Santa Barbara fire as well as the H1N1 Influenza, formerly known as the swine flu.

In 2010, ReliefPoint was used to facilitate response efforts following the Deepwater Horizon BP Oil Spill in the Gulf Coast Region.

Today, ReliefPoint serves as a single, unified communications point for disaster relief coordination. Because ReliefPoint is Web-based, relief workers can disseminate information to the public in real-time—whether they are working inside the disaster zone or 3,000 miles away.

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