Pool this data – lists of survivor/missing databases: As people have been kind enough to e-mail me links to the following efforts to build databases of names of survivors and missing people, I’m happy to list them. There needs to be a way to pool this data so that people don’t have to go from database to database looking for the information they seek. Perhaps a narrow search engine that just indexes these domains? A google hack that just searches these? If someone comes up with one, please add it to the comments:
Update: The Katrina People Finder Project is an effort to pull-together all of the disparate databases and forums springing up to help loved ones find one another. They need volunteers.
Update II: The great folks at Yahoo! Have developed a search tool that indexes all of the databases.
Other lists of lists:
Yahoo! Hurricane Katrina Missing Person and Survivor Lists
Online Journalism Review Katrina Wiki
About.com’s Katrina Relief
Finding Loved Ones (FirstGov.gov)
Databases/forums:
(As of 8:30 A.M. (CDT), Sunday, I have updated the list below in order to synch it with the lists being maintained by About.com, Yahoo! and the Online Journalism Report being maintained by Staci Kramer. Rather than point to this post, I encourage everyone to point to About.com or Yahoo! as they have the resources and bandwidth to keep up with this. However, I still encourage search-engine geeks out there to come up with a narrow-search that indexes just these sites. Frankly, Google should be able to pull one of the Google mini boxes off the shelf and have something working within a half-an-hour.)
BBC News: Hurricane Katrina Missing People
CastPost.com Hurricane Katrina Person Database
Clarion-Ledger: Katrina Forums
CNN: Hurricane Katrina Safe List
Coast Guard: Report Those Missing/Stranded
Craigslist New Orleans: Lost and Found
DirecTV: Searchable PDF of text messages and emails
FamilyMessages.org: Katrina Survivor Locator
FullCircle.net Family & Friends Board
GulfCoastNews.com: Katrina Survivor Connector List
GWID.com: Katrina Missing List
Hugh MacLeod’s Hurricane Katrina Help Page
Hurricane Katrina Refugee Connect
Hurricane Katrina Survivor Registry (searchable)
Hurricane Katrina Survivors Forums
International Red Cross: Family News Network for Katrina
Katrina Check-In (site is down)
Meetup.com: Hurricane Katrina Meetups
NowPublic.com: Katrina Missing Persons Board
Picayune/Pearl River County Katrina Survivors
Red Cross Alert for Persons with Emergency Medical Conditions
Salvation Army Team Emergency Radio Network
Union for Reform Judaism Message Boards
U.S. Military Relief Information
Wal-Mart’s Hurricane Katrina Message Board
WWLTV.com: Searching For Forum
Yahoo: Hurricane Katrina Message Boards
Got more links? Then either edit the OJR Katrina wiki or e-mail its editor at rniles(at)usc.edu
tags: katrina, katrina survivors katrina missing, katrina safe, katrina searching, katrina survivor, katrina list
Great job, Rex. We’re trying to keep as complete a list as possible at the OJR Wiki — http://www.ojr.org/ojr/wiki/katrina — where people can add links or submit them. I’m committed to keeping that list if you’d like to hand off links to me and point people there.
Also, it’s available in an OPML file updated dynamically as links are added or changed so the links can be imported. That url is http://70.85.87.132/KatrinaOPML/
At least one major search engine is working on aggregating the posts and creating a better way to search across them. In the meantime, it would help immensely if sites would start tagging posts and using categories that are searchable as tags. For instance, katrina and missing, safe, searching, housing, survivor, food, jobs, volunteer, donate, collect, links, photos, reference, etc. If you see sites that aren’t using tags, please encourage it — not everyone knows what tags are or how to use them — and/or link to them with the appropiate tags via sites like del.icio.us, furl, MyWeb2.0, etc. Some blogging software converts categories to tags. That will make it easier to aggregate. (I wrote about this a little today at Trust But Verify and hope to spread the word.)
Thanks again for all your great work.
Thanks Staci. I’ll forward everything I get to you. Thanks for getting all this started.