TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Red Cross Tsunami Victims' Web Site Overwhelmed

Red Cross Tsunami Victims' Web Site Overwhelmed

Lisa Minter (lisa_minter2001@yahoo.com)
Thu, 30 Dec 2004 19:46:06 EST

GENEVA (Reuters) - A Red Cross Web Site to aid anxious relatives
locate survivors of the Indian Ocean tsunami disaster partially
crashed on Thursday after being overwhelmed by some 650,000 hits in
its first 24 hours, a spokesman said.

The Swiss-based International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRCS) was
installing a bigger server and hoped to have the site, which had
become almost impossible to access, up and running again on Friday,
Florian Westphal told Reuters.

"We have had a tremendous response ... the system is partially down,"
he said.

As a result of the technical problems, it was not possible to tell
just how many people had been able to find their loved ones through
the site -- www.familylinks.icrc.org system.

But a few people had called to have names removed, he added.

The site has special sections for the four worst-affected countries --
Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Thailand and India -- where the overwhelming
majority of the more than 125,000 deaths occurred.

Some 5,000 foreign tourists, mostly Europeans, are unaccounted for
after an earthquake off Indonesia sent a wall of water crashing into
coasts and devastated beach resorts around the Indian Ocean.

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