I have been keying data on the Missing in Wikipedia as detailed below and it is so discouraging. Many posts don't have email addresses or contact info at all, the material is days old, it seems pointless. IT'S NOT POINTLESS! I was putting in a post from a missing forum on NOLA.com that recorded that someone was safe in a hospital, and I checked back to the post it referred to to get the stats on the person. On a whim I decided to call just to make sure they had gotten the info; I wasn't going to, it was two days old, they were probably exhausted, I was a stranger, but I decided to do it anyway...
They hadn't gotten it. They didn't know they had gotten a response two days before. I was able to tell them their loved one was okay, and give them the phone number to the hospital. The person who had responded had provided a paragraph of good information that I read to the guy. He didn't sound excited at all; he must have been in shock. I, on the other hand, am shaking.
I contacted Belo Corp, on the line they put up for their employees to call in, and asked them to get the message out to be announced on the air on WWL-TV (I think I was talking to the benefits guy so who knows? He called me back, though, so maybe...) People, check back on the fora frequently once you've posted your plea!! Ted says they're like messages in bottles tossed into the sea. But sometimes they work!
Unbelieveable. Unbelieveable that it's me doing this, too, from my bedroom which I haven't yet left today. It's not Armageddon, Grace; it's just the breakdown of civilization as we thought we knew it.
Keep stuffing those bottles. Keep typing.
3 comments:
Ah, e, thank you for cheering me up. I was finally able to get on and grab a chunk from Blogherald Missing, which I've just completed. Like you said, so much info was missing, and I wondered if what I was doing was really helping, but I knew that it was better than doing nothing. It took me about an hour and 20 minutes to put the whole chunk in. Hearing that your hard work bore fruit made me happier than you know.
it is "labor" intensive. One wishes there was another way, but apparently not at present. O points out that the victims are probably not necessarily net savvy, and he's right, and so they may not have even made the posts for themselves and wouldn't even be able to go check back. My experience was probably irrepeatable, but one never knows what's going to be helpful. Thanks.
badger points out that some of the evacuees in the Astrodome cannot read
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