Mandatory Training Video

Thank you for helping your community. This tutorial will show you how to use Crisis Cleanup to coordinate cleanup efforts.

The Crisis Cleanup website does NOT accept requests directly from the public. Only organizations that provide free services may use Crisis Cleanup. Volunteers must first join an organization. To participate, an organization must:

• Be on the ground or answer calls.
• Interact directly with survivors.
• Do work of this type, including assessments, debris removal, muck-outs, rebuilding.
• Be reputable.

You will receive an invitation email from [e-mail]. It will be titled, "[The Name of Someone You Know] Has Invited You to Join Crisis Cleanup." Click on the activation link, follow the instructions, choose a password, and log in.

Dashboard

When you log in, you will see the Worker Dashboard. Inviting teammates is the most important thing you can do. Enter the email addresses of everyone in your organization who will interact with survivors—team leaders, workers, volunteers and office staff. Click "Send Invites," and each person will receive an email that says you have invited them to join Crisis Cleanup. They will follow the same process as you did to activate their account, choose their own password and log in.

Your team will work better when everyone has access to Crisis Cleanup. For example, volunteers who find someone has already been helped are able to log in and update the work order. Then they may choose another nearby job without calling anyone. Paper work orders don't get lost in a pickup truck. And some poor office staffer won't get stuck entering the giant stack of completed jobs into the system.

If you need to quickly onboard a busload of people in the field, you may Invite Teammates with a Temporary Password. Click "Generate Temporary Password," and a random password will appear on the screen. Shout that password to everyone on the bus. They can visit crisiscleanup.org on their phones, click "Login," then "Use Your Temporary Password." With this process you can onboard dozens of people in minutes!

Intake

Next, click "Intake" at the top of the screen.

This is the intake form. Volunteers talk with survivors over the phone or in person. Any organization may add a case to Crisis Cleanup using a computer, tablet or smart phone. We do not yet have a smart phone app, but the website is completely mobile responsive.

Any information you enter into Crisis Cleanup will be shared with multiple relief organizations. Make sure you have permission from the resident to share his or her information before entering it into Crisis Cleanup. Survivors are generally grateful to be on a list that will increase their odds of being helped.

Type the resident's name and street address. The system will try to guess the location, and show you on the map. If the location is wrong, you can move the pin to the correct location.

A phone number is required. Choosing the "Primary Help Needed" will choose the icon on the map. Choosing "Trees," for example, will make a picture of a small tree appear on the map. This is helpful for organizations that may not allow their volunteers to use chainsaws. In that instance, they would ignore the tree icons and instead focus on other help, such as flood relief.

Crisis Cleanup is about property, not people. Minimize personal information. Do not enter dates of birth, social security numbers, detailed medical information, financial data, FEMA numbers, or any other potentially sensitive information. Crisis Cleanup is not designed for case management. Only enter information that a team leader on the ground needs to prioritize work crews.

All other information is provided for convenience, and is completely customizable for each disaster. Please add as much detail as you can, to give field volunteers as much situational awareness as possible.

Scroll to the bottom of the Intake form. Later you may return to change the status, and enter volunteer hours.

When you create a case, you can either "Save" or "Claim and Save." If you Save, the case will appear on the map, and any organization may claim it and go to work. If you click "Claim and Save," then you are reserving the work order for yourself, and telling all of the other relief agencies to NOT assist this person. Please be sure to click the correct button. If you accidentally claim and save a work order, you may visit the map to unclaim the work order.

When you save, Crisis Cleanup will look for possible duplicates. Each possible duplicate will include a link to the work order. Click the link to review the case. If the case is a duplicate, simply edit the existing case and abandon the new entry. Otherwise, you may click "Ignore and Save."

If you are entering multiple people in the same apartment complex, the system will flag each one as a possible duplicate, which can be annoying. To skip the duplicate check, check the "Skip duplicates" checkbox before you save.

Map

Next, scroll to the top of the page and click "Map." This is the map. Magnifying glasses with numbers indicate a high concentration of cases. Click on a magnifying glass to zoom in. Keep doing this until you can see individual icons.

The icon shape indicates the type of work, such as tree work or muck outs. The icon color indicates its status. Red icons are unclaimed, and may be claimed by any organization with capacity. Orange icons have been claimed, while yellow icons are in progress. Green and gray icons have been closed.

Click on an icon to view details. An infobox will appear. You may claim the work order by clicking "Claim," and the icon will change from red to orange, signaling to the rest of the community that your organization has accepted responsibility for helping this person. If you do not have capacity to help, be sure to unclaim the work order so another organization may help.

Change the status as a work order progresses. Once a work order is assigned, mark it "Open, assigned." There are many other available statuses including "Open, needs followup," "Closed, completed," and "Closed, rejected." Click "Printer Friendly" if you need to print, and click the Edit button to see and edit details.

If you wish, you may use Crisis Cleanup to keep track of the number of volunteers who participated and volunteer hours worked on each work order after it is complete.

The search bar is near the top of the page. You may search for a resident's name, address, or case number. Click the checkboxes below to filter the map. And you may download a complete report of all work orders in a CSV, or Excel file, at any time by clicking the "CSV" button below "Download."

You may view other organizations participating in cleanup efforts, browse cases, see high-level statistics or redeploy to a new incident.