Roughly 50,000 residents were under evacuation orders.¹ They needed shelter information, official updates, and practical help on a phone. I organized the site around those tasks and made language selection the first step.

The language choice persists in the URL and a cookie. A Vietnamese link opens in Vietnamese. For the translation pipeline, I used a glossary to preserve street names, agency names, and hotline numbers.

I labeled official updates separately from community aid and linked each resource to its source. The site also identifies itself as independent and unaffiliated with government agencies.

Free rides and meals had deadlines. I gave each resource an expiry time so it would move into the archive automatically. Category filters helped residents find the type of support they needed.

The map answered another immediate question: “Am I in the zone?” It showed evacuation boundaries and closures, then the repopulation area. Location checks stayed on the reader's device.

Residents were sharing screenshots of resource cards. Within a day, I added copy links that opened a specific card in the reader's language. Unlike a screenshot, the linked listing could reflect updates and expiry.

I adapted an emergency-alert concept I had previously explored in Figma. Its status bar, map, shelters, and hotlines gave me a starting structure. I brought the frames into Cursor, built the site, and launched within six hours of the evacuation orders.

The first version led with the map. As residents asked for practical help, I moved community support forward and added categories, expiry, and sharing. When the evacuation lifted, the status changed and the site shifted toward return-home information and an archive.

Let residents shape the resource card

I explored three card layouts and chose the distance-led direction. Requests from people using the site then added source links, category tags, end times, and the copy-link action.

I shared the site in neighborhood groups and visited the Freedom Hall evacuation center with a handwritten sign. Across the incident, the site recorded:

Residents' replies confirmed that people were finding and sharing updates. The project was later featured on The Leading in a Crisis Podcast.²

I would launch with resource links from day one. Screenshots were circulating before copy links existed, and they could not reflect changing availability.

The strongest decisions came from practical needs: choose a language, check a source, find help that is still available. The site remains online with its archive, preserving a starting point for future community response.

1. City of Garden Grove emergency updates, ggcity.org/emergency; Orange County Fire Authority blast-radius modeling via the LA Times; evacuation lifted May 26, 2026, 7:30 PM.
2. The Leading in a Crisis Podcast, EP83, Volunteer Turns Chaos Into Clarity With A Community Crisis Website.
3. The site: ggspill.com. Source code: github.com/vector-y/hazardOC.