West Palm Beach-based Emergency App is equipping us with the digital tools necessary to weather disasters

By Riley Kaminer

When Hurricane Irma hit in 2017, Joe Russo was inspired to do something to help our South Florida community. The Palm Beach Gardens native, who previously founded South Florida Tech Hub, ventured down to the Florida Keys to aid in the recovery response. It was a success, asserted Russo: “My role was organizing logistics for the point of distribution mission. Through the food water mission for the Middle and Lower Keys, we got resources to over 20,000 people in four and a half days.”

“It leans more on my experience as a scrappy founder than as anything else,” Russo said. Why? Not just because he had many processes and procedures to learn on the fly. But mainly because the entire operation was done without the use of technology. For Russo, who grew up with computers in the classroom, this was a shock.

At eMerge Americas in 2018, when Russo met a former FEMA administrator. In sharing this experience with him, Russo said that many of his concerns about the lack of technology were validated.

Fast forward to 2021, and Russo began to build Emergency Ventures, a West Palm Beach-based startup that aims to leverage technology to help us better respond to weather disasters – and ultimately save lives. The company’s product, Emergency App, is a digital tool that provides personalized emergency information such as evacuation instructions, severe weather warnings, and status updates about key infrastructure like airports. Going forward, Emergency App plans to launch a feature that enables users to create a profile that enables them to receive notifications tailored to their local area.

It was during Hurricane Ian last September that Emergency App went through its trial by fire – or by water, as it were. “Before Ian, we had pushed some stuff live,” Russo told Refresh Miami. “But when we saw the hurricane was coming, we knew that this would be now or never to put this out there.” A few all-nighters later, and alongside a few helpful students from Boca Code, Emergency App was live.

Hurricane Ian particularly affected Russo, who studied at Florida Gulf Coast University in Fort Myers, one of the areas that Ian hit the hardest. Seeing the images of destruction in places where he had so many memories really struck a chord for Russo, and motivated him to continue building Emergency App: “I was doing this so that if the world impacted me, I would have a resource.”

During the first 24 hours, Emergency App reached over 2,000 unique users. That helped the team build data sets used by the Florida Division of Emergency Management and others to support recovery efforts.

This month, Emergency App announced a partnership with hotel booking website HotelPlanner to serve communities and first responders during natural disasters and other emergencies. The idea is that HotelPlanner will port their real-time hotel inventory into Emergency App to provide citizens with clearer insights into which hotels are open and what rooms are available during natural disasters and other emergencies.

While the company is currently pre-revenue, Russo signaled that a major revenue stream will be for the app to be used by government organizations. They could also provide these organizations with data-driven insights, for example around how many people are evacuating in an area at a given time. The startup, which currently has three full-time employees, is in the midst of raising funds to propel its product development and expansion.

Try out Emergency App right in your web browser here. 

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Riley Kaminer