Hours after yesterday’s 7.2 magnitude quake struck eastern Turkey, Turkish TV journalist Erhan Çelik appealed to his 22,000+ Twitter followers to match newly homeless victims with others willing to share their homes.
The Guardian reports his story:
About seven hours later he tweeted: ‘There are 17,000 mails in my inbox. I’ll send them all to the Istanbul governorate. I thank you all in the name of earthquake victims.’
Soon afterward came the message that authorities in Istanbul would now take offers of accommodation directly and these should no longer be emailed to him. There is now a 24-hour hotline for such offers to be made.
Google has also deployed its person finder app, first used in after the Haiti earthquake, and since used after natural disasters in Japan and New Zealand. The app lets people enter information about missing loved ones as well as giving information about people that are unaccounted for.
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