Typical reports on past disasters contain valuable lessons that can help us improve our preparedness and response strategies and operations, especially with the help of modern analysis, simulation and visualization tools. However, disaster historical records are typically written in natural language for human consumption. They sometimes contain inconsistent data and information, which take time and effort to uncover. Extracting from the reports for further analysis by tools is almost impossible. DiSRC (Disaster Scenario and Record Capture) system is being designed as a solution of these problems. The system contains a cloud-based authoring system together with Disaster Record Capture Tools (DiReCT) running on mobile devices. Targeted users of DiReCT are government agents who are responsible for contributing data to be included in disasters records and volunteers trained by the responsible agencies. They can use DiReCT to capture observation data on the dynamics and effects of the disaster on places and people in machine readable form. The quality of the captured observation data is controlled and assured by both the capturing tools in real-time and by tools in the cloud. The authoring system can assist authors to write reports on the disaster based on the captured data and information. Disaster records produced with the help of DiSRC system can be read and processed by search, analysis, simulation and visualization tools for purposes such as developing better response strategies, providing decision support during emergencies, postdisaster analysis, and so on.