Google switches on Christchurch earthquake service Google is offering its "personfinder" database to help people in Christchurch, New Zealand find friends and family in the wake of last night's earthquake. The googlepersonfinder home page has two buttons - one for those looking for someone and another button for surfers who have information about a Christchurch resident. The …
Well, there are "about 6900 records" for a city of 400k inhabitants, so far. I make that 1.7% so check back in a couple of days. Anything like this is bound to be statistically successful at best. I found good news about friends in ChCh, but I already knew they were OK. The Internet is up and running there.
Kudos to Google for trying.
I live some 70km outside of Chch so just got a minor rattling.
Internet access will depend on ISP. I lost mine approx 30 min after the quake but it is back now.
Cell and texting were intermittent for a while but are now pretty much sorted.
There are several orders of magnitude of difference between Haiti and this Chch quake. Haiti had 200k+ people killed. Christchurch has had less than 100.
Unlike Haiti where comms was out for weeks, Christchurch comms are pretty much fully reestablished so people can check on each other via phone, texting etc.
The finder thing might have been useful for Haiti where this was the only link for many, but the conditions in Christchurch are completely different meaning it is unlikely to be of any real use.
The multilingual site https://safeandwell.communityos.org/cms/index.php was created in 2006. Why reinvent the wheel four years later and create a divisive reporting mechanism? Why make loved ones search in two different places, why expect disaster survivors to sign up at Google's site as well as the Red Cross site?
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