Emergency Website to Find the Lost

The aftermath of Hurricane Helene is showing the People that the media establishment is not interested in revealing actual, relevant, and cross-party news that matters. It also shows us the media has no ability to help people find their lost loved ones. Social media has some ability to connect people, but there is no centralized location (does everyone have THAT app?), and no organization to the plethora of posts.

Part of the responsibilities of FEMA or another national-level emergency management entity should be to help people reconnect with their family members, their community, and the nation as a whole. But they are limited, too, in their ability to cover down on finding or reconnecting missing people.

HHS can set up a central emergency website aimed at finding/reconnecting the lost.

On one section of this website, people of all locations can post basic information (i.e. name, age, last known location) and hopefully a photo of people they are searching for. There will be another section where people of all locations can post basic information (i.e. name if possible, age if possible, location of photo or encounter) and hopefully a photo of people they found.

Points to flesh out:

  • Whether this site should require login for access; level of security on the site
  • Whether the site should be accessed by gov’t employees only, or by any US citizen, or by a private company charged with the duties (i.e. NGO, church/synagogue/temple, etc.)
  • Privacy issues of photos taken by random people (does everyone in the photo need to known their photo is being taken, or being uploaded to a public-facing website)
  • What additional information should be on the site (e.g. instructions on how people in the aftermath [presumably who don’t have cell phones, power, etc. to digitally connect with their loved ones] can connect further with their loved ones)
  • Time frame that photos/information is kept on the site (is it taken down x number of days after the connection is made? What to do with the photos/info of people who are never found? etc.)
  • Should communications be allowed on the site (like a social media post that both parties can see and respond to)
  • Should the site use AI or facial recognition to aid in reconnecting people? Would it be better to let users manually search photos and posts for their connections?

There are a number of other considerations to work out before this could become reality. But the importance of finding lost loved ones, especially after a destructive storm or incident, warrants a conversation on how emergency agencies (whether national or state level) can facilitate those desperately needed connections.