Article 6; Cries for Help via Text Messages Are Used to Direct Aid to Haiti

This weeks’ article is titled: “Cries for Help via Text Messages Are Used to Direct Aid to Haiti”. The article is focused on the natural tragedy that recently occurred in Haiti. Where technology comes into play for this particular article is in the form of text messaging. The article follows through the eyes of a man whose job it is to sift through thousands of text message requests from Haitians in need of food and suffering from loss of family members and their homes.

Many of the requests given by Haitians seem quite horrific. “I’m hungry and I have no one,” says one Haitian. “People are unable to breathe due to the smell of the dead,” says another. As a member of the Coast Guard, Ryan Bank says that he has received nearly 18,000 text messages from Haitians. He added that many of them are “utterly heartbreaking”.

Mr. Banks job, after the text message is received and the need is identified, is to relay that information to “military personnel at the United States Southern Command in South Florida.” The reason for the decision of basing the emergency network on text messaging was because of the “damage Haiti’s telecommunications system suffered in the quake”. According to the author, “Fallen cell towers and overloaded networks made telephone calls nearly impossible”. Mr. Bank noted that the bandwidth required for phone calls is much higher than that required for simple text messages. For that reason, text messaging became the best means of communication.

The texting program was brought into play very rapidly, and has evolved into a messaging service to deliver key information to those who had previously used the service. "The joint program has expanded to include regular news and information updates to those who have reached out through the emergency line, telling them where to find food relief and seek medical attention”.


Main Article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/21/world/americas/21text.html?ref=technology


Second Article:
http://www.samasource.org/haiti/