Last night, Nepal experienced the worst earthquake in more than 80 years, registering 7.8 on the Richter Scale. Our team is doing a few things to try to aid the response.
The first is Person Finder, which we launched in English, Nepali and Hindi, with other languages coming soon, just after the quake hit. Person Finder gives people a way to post and search for family or friends affected by the disaster. If you’re worried about someone, click on “I’m looking for someone” and type in their name. If you want to let people know you’re safe or have heard from someone in the area, then click on “I have information about someone” and put in their names and details.
We’ve also made the Search function of Person Finder available through SMS. In India and the U.S., simply text “search ” to +91.977.330.0000 in India or +1.650.800.3978 in the U.S.
The Person Finder tool can also be embedded on any website using the following HTML code:
We are also working to get updated satellite imagery to aid in the recovery effort by, among other things, identifying impacted areas and evacuation routes, which we’ll update here. And Google.org is committing $1 million to the response, with up to an additional $250,000 in employee gift-matching from Google.
Sadly, we also lost one of our own to this tragedy, Dan Fredinburg, who was on his way to try to summit Everest. He was a long-time member of our Privacy team and an all around just amazing person. Our thoughts are with the people of Nepal, and with Dan’s family and friends during this terrible time.
Posted by Payal Patel, Product Manager, Google Crisis Response
