Help on web for Katrina victims
2005-09-02 11:20
San Francisco - From beloved website Craigslist to the internet search business Yahoo, online communities are trying to connect Hurricane Katrina refugees with what they need to survive.
"People are smart, good and surprise me with the way they use our site," Craigslist creator Craig Newmark wrote in reaction to postings of housing offers, lost people and rides to or from the cyclone-ravaged United States state of Louisiana.
Newmark created the website as a city-by-city online bulletin board for "people to help each other out". He added pages for Baton Rouge, Pensacola and Mobile on Wednesday.
Newmark had his team add special links for ride sharing and volunteering, a check of the site on Thursday revealed.
A wealth of information
The website teemed with offers of clothing, gift baskets, children's toys, spare rooms available to refugees and folks offering to make telephone calls for refugees who send them e-mail messages.
An image-sharing website called Karmus.com had pages for pictures of people lost in the hurricane as well as a place for the missing to leave messages for those trying to find them.
The website also linked to photos of Katrina's aftermath and a forum for people to "come together and share our thoughts and prayers for those who're dealing with Katrina".
Yahoo altered its home page to make it easy for visitors to find the cornucopia of chat rooms and message boards related to Katrina, according to a company spokesperson who asked not to be named.
Yahoo News served up more than 110 million "page views" of pictures from Katrina on both Monday and on Tuesday in what the company described as a week of record-setting website traffic.
Donations flooding in
"Everybody is really desperate to know what is going on and how they can help," the Yahoo spokesperson said. "Yahoo just wants them to access news and information. This is absolutely not a promotion."
The Red Cross shifted 60% of hurricane-related traffic from its website to Yahoo's site, according to the Silicon Valley firm.
By late afternoon, Yahoo had processed 95 000 donations for Katrina victims and was tending to another 50 000 pledges, the company reported.
The home page of internet search titan Google bore an unadorned black ribbon link that visitors could click on for disaster information.
The home page of Microsoft's popular MSN Search featured a "Katrina Relief" link with a picture from the aftermath.
"Every one of us at Microsoft is deeply saddened by the destruction of property and personal lives in the wake of Hurricane Katrina," the company's site said.
"Our hearts go out to the hundreds of thousands of people who have been affected by the storm and its aftermath."
Microsoft reported it had pledged $1m to hurricane relief organisations and is sending gear and technicians to set up satellite communication systems for relief centres.