Bloggers Helping Hurricane Katrina Survivors
One of our friends at Weblogs Work, Brian Oberkirch, was featured in the Washington Post recently for his efforts to connect people through the Slidell Hurricane Damage Blog and provide neighborhood-specific information:
I was able to get to my apt at the Anchorage Sat 09/03/05," said one message posted yesterday. "Came in thru Eden Isles off Hwy 11 — the beautiful white anchor at entrance is covered in about 7 ft of debris and there is only a one-lane path to enter/exit until over the little bridge."
Also featured is fellow law blogger Ernest Svenson, also known as Ernie the Attorney, who is from New Orleans and evacuated to Houston, Texas and later to Baton Rouge. Svenson began posting notes via a friend out of town, to whom he would text messages from the city. Information-sharing during a natural disaster is only the tip of the iceberg of what blogs can and are doing. No longer just a place to rant about politics or tell readers what you ate for breakfast, blogs are dynamic marketing tools, news portals and interactive message boards. They’ve been a blessing to people looking for missing loved ones. Bloggers are posting photos and e-mails from readers, trying to reunite families and friends. Since the disaster began, new and existing blogs are helping refugees and other survivors find places to live, work, and regroup after losing everything in the hurricane, an unexpected but valuable function.
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