Christchurch Earthquake Online Resources

23 February, 2011 Leave a comment

As everyone will know by now, a magnitude 6.3 earthqauke occurred at 12.51pm on February 22 2011, 10km southeast of Christchurch at a depth of just 5km. As someone from the city with many friends and family there, my thoughts and prayers are with everyone down in Christchurch. I am happy to say that my immediate family are safe and have heard from many friends that are ok also.

This quake is the largest in a vast number of earthquakes since the magnitude 7.1 at 4:35am on September 4 2010 that occurred west of the city near Darfield.

News has been flowing fast and raw in many cases, sadly with some mis-information and rumor mixed in. I’m not going to repeat news details here, but I will list some online resources that I’ve been using t get news.

First up twitter.
Many use it, yet many have never seen/understand it. Touted as a micro-blogging service, I like to think of it as a public SMS or TXT service were anyone can broadcast a short message to anyone in the world who cares to listen. These short messages are called “tweets” and you receive them by “following” people or organisations you care about. The beauty here is you can get messages in real-time, direct from the source and unfiltered, sometimes containing links to photos or videos. As such, Twitter is extremely powerful in a disaster situation since messages can be posted either online or via a mobile phone. Here’s some accounts and searches to check out:

Twitter Searches:
A search listing is the fastest way to see new and varied information – but remember to take care with sources. Tweets relating to the earthquake are being tagged with the primary hashtag #eqnz. Other tags also being used are #chch and #christchurch. A stream of tweets with these hashtags can be seen via a Twitter search but also via Google search where the page auto-updates:

Twitter Accounts:
Many individuals in Christchurch are tweeting, as are authorities and organisations. Here’s a few organisations that have been and continue to post relevant news:

Twitter aside, there are also many other websites providing information and advice to both those in need and those wanting to help. Here’s a selection…

Official emergency info:

Reports:

Response and help info:

Donations

Local news:

Photos:

Other sites:

  • www.facebook.com – a good place to keep in touch with friends/family, or post info about your friends if you know they are safe

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So, there’s a start for some local online info and more links may be added in time.

You can link to this page via bit.ly with the URL: http://bit.ly/eqnzlinks

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Donate to the NZ Red Cross
 Donate to the NZ Red Cross at:
www.redcross.org.nz/donate

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