google earth community

Google Earth Community to the Rescue

May 13, 2015

We recently came across this interesting thread on the new Google Earth Community.

Apparently a woman was driving through a park in Lithuania with her sister. They got stuck in the mud and didn’t know where they were. They did have a cell phone, but did not know how to send their GPS coordinates. So instead, they posted a screenshot from Google Maps on Facebook. Soon after, the cell phone battery died making further communication impossible. Someone then posted the image on the Google Earth Community website asking if anyone could help find the exact location. Google Earth Community member ‘krenek’ found and posted the location, which was used by the search team to successfully locate the car, and a kilometre away, the two women, who had spent the night in the car and then decided to set off on foot in search of help.

Well done ‘krenek’ and the Google Earth Community!

The image that was used in the rescue.

To see the location in Google Earth, use this KML file that was posted on the Google Earth community by ‘krenek’.

We have looked at similar rescue stories in the past, such as this one, where a lost family was rescued with help from landmarks identified in Google Earth. Back in 2007 famed adventurer Steve Fossett went missing and there was an attempt to find him using satellite imagery. Sadly the search was unsuccessful. The crash site was only identified a year later. You can read more about it on Wikipedia.

The building of the Siam-Burma Railway

March 20, 2014

Frank McVey recently shared the fascinating story of the Siam-Burma Railway over in the Google Earth Community. The railway was built during World War II, as an effort to help connect the railway systems of Singapore, Malaya, Siam and Burma.

Frank’s full post goes into great detail about the railway, including a variety of maps and images related to the planning, construction and use of it:

In the end, the railway was built in 16 months – between June 1942 and October 1943 – by virtually-unaided human muscle power and became perhaps the greatest engineering feat of the Second World War. However, the fears of the earlier British surveyors were realised; through accident, disease, malnutrition, over-work, incompetent logistics, theft of Red Cross supplies by the Japanese guards, criminal neglect and extreme brutality by the Japanese guards and engineers and their even more brutal Korean overseers, some 16,000 POWs and 120,000 native labourers died in its construction: they say that a man died for every sleeper (cross-tie) laid. Thousands of those who survived returned home as ruined men; many of them suffered life-long mental and physical incapacitation. Some of them – now very old men – are still suffering.

In addition, he’s constructed a detailed KMZ file that shows the path of the railway in Google Earth. Be sure to check out his full post to see everything that he put into it.

Great work, Frank!

Things that look like other things in Google Earth

September 25, 2013

A while back, ‘Diane9247’ posted a great series of images in the Google Earth Community of “Some things that look like other things“. Here is a sampling of some of the amazing items she found:

Our world is an amazing place, and we’re very fortunate to have tools such as Google Earth to allow us to explore it. Check out all of Diane’s finds for yourself in this series of posts.

What are some of your favorite “things” like that in Google Earth?