WeChat helps fight against Harvey

A mother with two young children are being ferried out of a flooded subdivision by fellow Chinese volunteers during Hurricane Harvey in Houston. PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY

On Sunday morning after Hurricane Harvey's overnight landing and torrential rains, Liao Yueqing, who is fondly called Captain Liao by many Chinese, responded to a request via WeChat, the Chinese equivalent of Facebook and Twitter:

"Does anyone have a boat? We are surrounded by water and need rescue."

"I have a boat and I will go," Liao replied. A couple of volunteers went along with him.

"However we didn't find the people needing rescue, I was given a wrong address," said Liao.

Then he received another message to save another stranded Chinese family. He could not get there - the water was too shallow for his oceangoing vessel.

"I had to turn around," Liao said. "By then a lot of people were stranded. They started to wave at us for help. Despite my initial intention to help fellow Chinese in the community, I ended up rescuing people regardless of their race."

As word spread on WeChat, more people from the Chinese community joined his effort. The Captain Liao rescue team grew from one boat to more than 20 by Tuesday. Eventually Captain Liao's team was integrated into to Houston's 911 response system and 911 callers identified as Chinese were directly referred to him and his team.

On the first day, Liao and a handful of volunteers managed to save close to 20 stranded families.

Residents wade with their belongings through floodwaters brought by Hurricane Harvey in Houston on Wednesday. ADREES LATIF / REUTERS

"I have done rescues in the areas of South 610, Memorial around Beltway 8 and Sugarland, since Sunday morning," Liao said. "I probably have helped to ferry more than 200 people from stranded water."

Liao's home also became an impromptu transfer center; people who didn't know where to go stayed at his home over night until they connected with relatives or friends.

Information transfer on WeChat could get chaotic. Occasionally, when the rescue boat arrived at a specified address, the people had already left.

Zhang Baozhen, known by her alias Liu Sanjie on WeChat, took responsibility for sorting through information to reduce the number of fruitless trips.

"We have a group of volunteers making calls to make sure that people were indeed still there waiting before

sending out the information to the boat team," Zhang said. "Our focus was on the old, the young and the sick."

One Chinese woman was pregnant and near her expected delivery date. She was very anxious about getting out with the birth pending. Eventually she connected with Captain Liao's team and was rescued along with her family, according to Zhang.

The group's contact number became more widely known. "We started to receive calls from non-Chinese speaking people," Zhang said. "I took my high-school daughter with me to help translate because I don't speak English very well."

The most chaotic scene came when mandatory evacuation was ordered for the Sugar Land community on Monday afternoon. "Power was out, water was out, houses were under water, and kids were crying, scared. It was a mess.

"We enlisted a bus with more than 20 seats nearby to transport people ferried out. The team probably moved a couple hundred people that day, most of them were non-Chinese," Zhang said.

Nobody knows how many people the entire team rescued; nobody was keeping track.

Zhang and her WeChat group were not alone in making sure the rescue information was good. Qin Mei, a community activist whose home was flooded, had to stay at a friend's place. While dealing with her own personal crisis, she also made an effort to help others through WeChat by ensuring information was accurate.

Qin re-posted many requests for help on Sunday and Monday. "But I called the number on each request, confirming that they had not left before I posted the information. I also asked them to start posting the time the request was first sent out. That helped a lot," Qin said.

It's not just rescue information that needed to be accurate. WeChat, while helpful, can also be a fertile ground for rumors.

Left: Chinese volunteers and American volunteers go into flooded area on boat to look for stranded residents in flooded area during hurricane Harvey in Houston. Right: Volunteers get boat ready for rescue during hurricane Harvey in Houston. PHOTOS PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY

"At 4:00 am last night someone said on WeChat that the reservoir had spilled over and we needed to evacuate," a Chinese women with alias Maomao said. "I said it was not in the official news, but this person insisted that the authorities would not tell us the truth."

Later, rumors that Hurricane Irman was coming toward Houston circulated in some WeChat groups. Some started to panic. "But Irman was far out over the Atlantic," Maomao sighed.

Such fake and sensational news is not uncommon on WeChat and can be harmful, said Ke Yan, owner of Merry Houston, a WeChat platform dedicated to serving the Houston Chinese community.

"Information disseminated through WeChat can be very chaotic," Ke said. "A lot of Chinese in Houston are unable to read English, especially in-depth reports and analysis. Many readily believe in the worst possibilities and sensational news. Such sensational misinformation often spreads fast like wildfire, causing panic and making a situation even worse."

Ke formed two WeChat groups totaling about 1,000 people to provide and spread confirmed rescues and other information. She took it upon herself to combat false information with accurate reports. Volunteers were enlisted to gather information on airports, roads, shelters, supermarkets, rescue requests, flooding, forecasts, evacuation orders and the like.

When someone asked for information, she did research to find the right answer, translated into Chinese and passed it on.

"I've slept less than four hours a day since Hurricane Harvey came," Ke said. "I closely monitor the situation, gather important information, have someone translate it and then publish it every day, updating as needed."

Many in the WeChat groups expressed their gratitude for the much needed reliable information in Chinese to help make decisions amid a fluid situation.

As Harvey retreated, the various WeChat groups also shifted their focus to helping out with shelters and rebuilding.

"I established two groups - one to provide information about insurance claims and rebuilding, another to provide information on housing," Qin said.

Ke said she organized a volunteer group to concentrate on how to help people deal with the aftermath of the hurricane.

"WeChat is powerful, but we have to make an effort to make sure the right information is out there," Ke said.

mayzhou@chinadailyusa.com