CYPRUS TODAY
JANUARY 20-26, 2001
Issue Number 473
A Girne-based computer
service for tracing "missing persons" in the wake of disasters
has again been in action following Saturday's killer earthquake in El
Salvador.
Locators Online,
run by the Thomas family from their SURF Internet Education Centre,
had yesterday received 126 appeals for aid from people concerned for
friends and relatives in the devastated country.
In 117 cases, the
"targets" were found alive and well. Six could not be traced
because of insufficient information and three because of a breakdown
in communications to some areas of stricken El Salvador.
The Locators Online
service has successfully made contact with 1,263 people, helping them
to get in touch with their families, after four previous earthquakes
- in Turkey in August and November 1999, and in Greece and Taiwan the
same year.
The Thomases' unique
Internet-based service was spawned when the Girne computer centre became
the focus of attention around the world in August 1999, as a channel
of inquiries from people anxious to find friends and relatives "missing"
in Turkey's earthquake-hit Marmara region.
The formal Locators
Online website went "live" at 3.01.37am on August 17 last
year - exactly a year, to the second, from when that tremor struck.
Executive director
David Thomas, who devised the service with his father Terry, mother
Fatma, and sister Alison, said this week: "Our locators in El Salvador
are working around the clock, gathering information for people requesting
our assistance. We are having no difficulty in tracing victims from
neighbouring countries, however communications with many areas of El
Salvador still remains difficult.
"We are also
communicating with the Salvadoran National Emergency Committee ... we
are currently working together with the Red Cross, and our contact information
has been published in many online news channels, including BBC News
Online."