Internet giants Google and Facebook have stepped in with technical aid for relief work in Chennai. Facebook has activated its “safety check” feature through which people can broadcast to their Facebook friends that they are safe with a single click. Google, on the other hand, has compiled all the crowdsourced material available online on the crisis response page. Meanwhile, small efforts by scattered individuals to bring food, candles, even power banks to the stranded, continued in the marooned city.

The Google Crisis Response page for “South India Flooding” has compiled publicly available links with help on food and shelter resources, and emergency phone numbers. Scattered online information in the form of tweets, google documents floated by rescue volunteers, and news reports are all compiled on a single location.

Facebook switched on its Chennai Flooding safety check featureat around 07.30 am on Thursday. At the time of going to press, data on the number of people who had used it was not yet available.

Besides the one-click safety check, there were several SOS calls on Facebook as well. One Kokila Palaniappan sought help contacting her family in Chennai. Saying that about 10 members of her family were stuck and unreachable, she provided an address and wrote in a public post: “They don’t have any food and most of them are sugar or heart patient. Have been trying for rescue boat for the past 12 hours and in vain. Also they don’t have much charge in their cell phones. So it is getting difficult to reach them. Any help extended would be greatly appreciated.” The post received over 3,000 shares.

By Thursday evening, a less than hopeful response came on the thread: “hi koki, went and searched ur house for 4 hrs today.. We went in boats with food and cried their names, no one responded. There’s 15 ft water in that street and it is impossible to recognise ur house from those photos,” wrote one Ashwin Badri.

Surprisingly, #chennairains not only lost its top spot from the national Twitter trends list on Thursday evening, but vanished from the list all together.

Even the city-specific trends for Chennai the tag, or one even related to the deluge, like #ChennaiFlood was nowhere on the list. However, volunteers, rescuers, and those in need of help continued to tweet their locations and the materials they required or could provide.

Chennai flood alert: Helpline numbers

source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / News Home> City> Chennai / TNN / December 04th, 2015