It was just last September that we were discussing the earthquake that struck Christchurch, New Zealand, and now they’ve been hit by another powerful quake.
As you might expect, and as reported by Google Maps Mania, there are already a variety of resources available to assist those in the area.
The easiest is the Google Person Finder for Christchurch, to help track down anyone that has been affected by the earthquake. You can use the site if you’re looking for someone, or if you know the condition of someone that others may be looking for. As of now, the site already has nearly 5000 records.
I’m very happy to report that Frank Taylor is doing well. He and his wife Karen were in downtown Christchurch when the quake struck, and while they saw a lot of damage around them, they were luckily unharmed. You can read about it on the Tahina Expedition blog, which includes some photos he has just taken in Christchurch.
Another great resource for the quake is this very useful Ushahidi-powered site, which provides information about hospitals, road conditions, hazard zones and other related information. It’s an excellent resource to have available if you’re on the ground in the area.
Finally, I encourage you to check out the Christchurch Quake Map, which shows all of the quakes and aftershocks in the area for the past year (nearly 5,000 of them). You can filter the map to show only the 55 quakes that have struck in the past 24 hours.
If you’re aware of any other great resources, please leave a comment and we’ll update this post as needed.
About Mickey Mellen
Mickey has been using Google Earth since it was released in 2005, and has created a variety of geo-related sites including Google Earth Hacks. He runs a web design firm in Marietta, GA, where he lives with his wife and two kids.
Hope things will get better soon
New resource: The latest satellite image of Christchurch, taken by Formosat-2 on 23 February. Please go to
http://gemdas.earth.ncku.edu.tw/NewZealand/NewZealand.aspx
Formosat image © 2011 Dr. Cheng-Chien Liu, Global Earth Observation and Data Analysis Center (GEODAC), National Cheng-Kung University and Dr. An-Ming Wu, National Space Organization, Taiwan.
Here’s something I’ve been playing with since the September earthquakes. I’m interested in Google Earth’s ability to display multidimensional data and this seemed like a nice way to visualize the earthquake data in 3 dimensions. Best way is to download one of the KMLs and do a bit of tilting, panning, and time-sliding. See https://sites.google.com/site/viewingtheworld/ .