Google has once again opened up its Person Finder to assist friends and relatives in tracking their loving ones missing persons in Nepal.
With 2,200 people confirmed dead, the M-7.8 earthquake is said to be one of the worst natural disasters in the past 80 years to strike the Himalayan country of Nepal Saturday.
As a simple crowd-sourced missing persons database, Google first deployed the application in 2010, to aid relief efforts in the devastating earthquake in Haiti, and has since used it for a score of times, including after Chile earthquake and Pakistan floods in 2010, Christchurch earthquake, Tōhoku tsunami, Van earthquake and Australia Floods in 2011, Hurricane Sandy, Philippine floods and U.S. wildfires in 2012, Boston Marathon bombings, Ya'an earthquake, Cyclone Phailin, Typhoon Haiyan in 2013.
Person Finder collects information coming from emergency responders and individual users for a missing person or someone who has been found. All data is public and anyone – media, authorities, NGO’s can all add to the database and there’s also a Person Finder API to get updates.
Facebook's so-called 'Safety Check' tool is also used to assure your relatives and friends of your safety.
Launched in October 2014, the tool is used to mark yourself as ‘safe’, which is visible to your friends and you can see their safety status.
"Safety Check is our way of helping our community during natural disasters and gives you an easy and simple way to say you're safe and check on all your friends and family in one place," Facebook's founder Mark Zuckerberg had said in a post on 16 October 2014 , mentioning that it was first developed in response to the Tokyo earthquake and tsunami in 2011.
People trapped can also other means of social media, such as Twitter to reach out their friends.
