Hours After Huge Turkey Earthquake Hits, Google Person Finder Is Live

Google has set up the Crisis Response Team and has been using the Google Person Finder tool to help in emergencies when people are trying to find information and are having little luck, due to overloaded infrastructure and general lack of data.

Google Person Finder, launched in January 2010 after the Haiti earthquake, is a simple tool that enables those looking for info to search for the people they know and for those with information to supply it in order to help others.

Now, hours after an earthquake hit Van, Turkey, the team had a translated version of Google Person Finder up and running.

The Turkish version of the site is here turkey-2011.googlepersonfinder.appspot.com.

Turkey is becoming a huge web market and a lot of people are online on a regular basis. That said, the country remains highly fragmented when it comes to economic development, which may explain why only 1,600 records are being tracked at this point.