We had a couple REAL bad earthquakes here a few years back.
Enough to see our part of the city without electricity, water, and sewerage out for extended periods(weeks to months).
I was a 12 on/24 off cordon commander and during my 24 "off" my guys and I still worked sourcing and distributing potable water in pretty substantial quantity(thousands of litres a day) to our own neighborhoods.
We developed a pretty efficient distribution system around convenient neighborhood hubs(street side in front of an active community member's garage), brought non-serving folks into it, and slowly pulled ourselves out of it to get some rest and allow us to focus on some other stuff.
We tried a "stone soup" exercise....which both worked and failed.....we put in things like pasta and thawing freezer meat...and the neighbors put in their "stones" and ate it.
But they got the message and thawing food was used for neighborhood BBQs sharing LPG bottles and BBQs which helped to bind ultra-local ties.
Being in the middle of summer helped.
But to be honest, the community engagement side of it went really well....it bound our community together a bit better(already good coms/relations)...and since I had arranged the water....people listened and acted when I made a few suggestions.
Nearly 3 years later my wife was just asked by someone who just moved in if it was her husband who organized water for everyone.
The only downside for us was the unfortunate case of a serving soldier("peer" NCO) living nearby who dumped his hysterical family on mine while I was on the job.
His wife and teenaged kids going nuts with ZERO pantry food or stored water. My wife gave them 2 days worth and kicked them off our property due to behavioral issues with the encouragement of our rottweiler. Thankfully, he is out of the unit and out of the neighbourhood.
The rest of the neighbours were all around above average. We found the folks to rely on were the older/retired but still active folks happy to take on the role of ultra-local "glue" a couple of houses in every direction.
Coms was a biggie......organizing my soldiers and coms with chain of command was mostly by txt message due to voice traffic overload.
Then the battery back ups on the cell towers failed on about day 3.
And it took a bit to sort out gennie recharging until mains power was back on.
I've been recently fiddling with a mesh network smart phone app that can daisy chain voice/txt/data via smart phone.......but it requires the ability to recharge phones as well as phone density to get a decent mesh to reach your target.
A couple of us NCOs kept in touch via quiet parts of the spectrum on occasion, but it wasn't really needed, as mobile phone coms were not out for long periods, and being out of uniform and without amateur licenses it was slightly naughty. Just a bit of self-directed training.
My only and biggest regret was missing an opportunity to partner with a local mashup organization called the Student Volunteer Army.
The SVA self-org'd and tried jumping in the mix to help(several thousand students). If I could go back and do it over I'd have just jumped in and embedded one of my soldiers(some of which are university students, the rest young working professionals) with each working sub group to liaise and coordinate their desire to help with the needs of the main rescue/recovery effort.
Unfortunately, after getting my ass kicked for "borrowing"(with owner's permission shortly after) two privately owned civilian trucks that we filled, staged, and certified with 28000L of potable water less than 6 hours after the quake I was gun shy to try anything "less than conventional".
I've been in touch with the SVA since to investigate and understand their timeline of events. It turns out they had a very hard time working with the relief effort, they basically were told to go home. Although the organization later received wide recognition for their independent efforts.
Crime was interesting and revealing.
The usual suspects(tweakers/opportunists) tried to take advantage. The justice system, media, and public gave the Police( and Army in support) a lot of latitude and moral support.
We worked in a mix of Police and Army and I even got to drive a cop car with the lights on(but no siren). We caught our share of idiots, but not as many as I thought there might be.
The number of hot young university students, MILFs, and aunties/grandmas that spent a good chunk of their day baking treats and making up big vats of coffee/tea for folks working the rescue/recover was awesome.
Terrible pain in the ass, but in some respects it's renewed my faith in humanity.
A couple out of every hundred were assholes, but a couple more than that stepped up and did something to help.
The rest were in the middle.
I reckon maybe it's a bit like what I read here about UW.....a couple percent on either end of the spectrum is what makes or breaks it.
Key points for me:
*potable water
*community engagement pre-event makes it easy(er)
*potable water
*persistent mesh coms.....a smartphone app, a bunch of hand crank chargers, and a WIFI amplifier antenna TIMES heaps might work
*potable water
*just go with the unconventional solution if my gut tells me it's right and take my lumps later
Just my amateur 0.02c