**Four dead in Pittsburgh flash floods**
BOISE STATE UNIVERSITY – 2.1 inches of rain fell in an hour in Pittsburgh Friday evening during evening rush hour.
Because an earlier storm had saturated the area with water, the rain caused flash floods that killed four people.
Kimberly Griffith and her two daughters, ages 12 and 8, were trapped in their car and drowned in water that rose up to nine feet high.
They were pronounced dead inside their car at 6:10 p.m. Friday, according to the Medical Examiner’s Office.
The fourth victim, who was not identified until Saturday, was 72-year-old Mary Saflin. She was found on the shore of the Allegheny River.
Various rescue personnel and police officers commandeered rowboats from a local marina and rescued at least 15 people who were stuck on the roofs of their vehicles or clinging to trees.
When the water receded, rescue crew discovered 18 vehicles that had been completely submerged.
_By Suzanne Craig, The Arbiter Online_
**Student rewrites Joplin relief manual**
UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS – After a EF5 tornado leveled much of the city of Joplin, Mo., a University of Arkansas student spent time studying the current strategies of disaster response there over the summer.
Katharine Branscum, Honors Fellow in the Sam Walton College of Business, began constructing a basic guide of key response strategies for the World Vision organization to use in future disasters while interning for the Supply Chain Management Research Center.
“In any disaster several people respond, one organization is World Vision. They quickly realized that while there are manuals and guides set up for disaster relief there was nothing simple for local groups such as churches to follow,” Branscum said.
World Vision is a Christian humanitarian organization dedicated to working with children, families, and their communities worldwide to reach their full potential by tackling the causes of poverty and injustice, according to their website.
World Vision had a disaster relief manual for professional disaster relief personnel, but it was several inches thick, said Matthew Waller, the head of the supply chain management department in Walton College.
The condensed manual includes information on handling donations, setting up an operations center, volunteer coordination and various other strategies all bulleted and easy to read, Branscum said.
“It could save lives. That’s what I really liked about being a part of this project,” Branscum said.
Most of the challenges with disaster relief are related to logistics. In a disaster response, the right disaster relief suppliers must be found and their supplies stored in the right locations, in the right quantities and at the lowest possible cost. Costs must be kept low so that resources can be applied in ways that really provide help to disaster victims, Waller said.
Branscum plans to use the relief guide as her honors thesis and expand on it by incorporating information from pastors involved in the Mississippi flood relief and Hurricane Katrina as well as individuals who responded to the recent Japan earthquake.
_By Mark Cameron, The Arkansas Traveler_
**New website offers students best textbook prices**
THE DAILY TITAN – Textbooks, whether new, used, digital or rental, can cost a pretty penny. For students who want to save money and find the best deals, SwoopThat.com may be able to help.
SwoopThat, a San Diego-based website founded in 2009, is an online price comparison website that focuses on saving students time and money. SwoopThat recently added support for 2,347 schools, which includes nearly 13 million students and 2.43 million courses, according to their site. The site also says that it can save students “up to 75 percent in 10 minutes” on their textbook purchases.
Jonathan Simkin, CEO of SwoopThat, said his goal for the website is to “open up the market and make (shopping) cheaper and easier for students.” He developed SwoopThat out of frustration from having to find books for his engineering courses.
SwoopThat is an integrated platform for online retailers and students, said Simkin.
The price comparison website currently doesn’t work with bookstores, but plans to do so in the future.
“One of our goals is to help bookstores reduce costs for students,” said Simkin.
SwoopThat allows students to search for new, used, rentable or digital textbooks by selecting their school, classes, as well as the section they are enrolled in. Once complete, students are given a price comparison for their required books from over 1,500 retailers, including Amazon, Chegg, Barnes & Noble and Borders.
By using a course-based search rather than inputting books “ISBN-by-ISBN,” Simkin said students save on money and time.
There are also options to create a free textbook exchange on campus or do price comparisons for “15 million products and compare prices from over 1,500 different retailers.”
SwoopThat also lets students sell their old textbooks to other students or online merchants.
_By Alvan Ung, The Daily Titan_