With yesterday's news of an earthquake in Chile I found myself browsing blogs for information and found an excellent tool. Hungary's Association of Radio Distress Signalling and Infocommunications' Emergency and Disaster Information Service is an interactive online map tracking all manner of emergency's and disasters around the globe.

This is an amazing webpage since it provides massive amounts of information in an easy to use format. It also shows many disasters that you are unlikely to see on the evening news. Earthquakes, mosques collapsing, norovirus outbreaks, power outages, you name it - it's here. This is a great website to spend an afternoon at just to learn more about what's happening in the world.

In an interesting posting, wikileaks (the custodians of information other people don't want you to know) have began posting all the pages that were sent in New York on September 11th 2001.

This list is incredibly interesting, you see people asking loved ones if they are okay, people spreading the news, and computer equipment reporting systems and networks going down. The list is also a little creepy since most of the people probably didn't expect their messages to be posted online eight years down the road.

Here are a few of the messages that were sent:

The very first message was from a computer system on the floor that was hit:

08:46:46 Arch [1612975] D ALPHA PAGE FROM lifeline: alert 8933585 ETS appl nbetpsd27.fi.gs.com ETS RTCE: - Market data inconsistent...Cantor API problem Trading system offline on nbetpsd27.fi.gs.com, run by etsuser on nbetpsd27, pid = 24277

Then the personal messages followed:

08:47:46 Arch [0901509] B ALPHA Someone just told me there was an explosion at
08:47:48 Arch [0901509] B ALPHA wtc....BR
08:52:50 Arch [0901509] B ALPHA A plane crashed thru the twin towers. Real bad..BR

09:06:14 Arch [0911374] D ALPHA a second plane crashed into the other tower !!!! Something doesn't seem right !!!!

13:31:46 Arch [0083310] D ALPHA 93-PLEASE CALL YOUR SISTER MERNA IN ALBANY AT 518-785-8296.

13:31:48 Metrocall [1746477] D ALPHA 03-BERNARD, PLEASE CALL YOUR MOTHER AT 305-650-9482.

And then came the emergency services;

10:24:37 Skytel [007102004] B ALPHA * DISASTER PLAN ACTIVATED * PREPARING FOR MASS CAS RECEIVING.... Cell Phones & Land

10:29:52 Metrocall [1785414] B ALPHA COUNTY IS IN A CODE RED SECURITY ALERT WE WILL KEEP YOU ADVISED OF ANY CHANGES KEEP ALERT THE GOVERONMENT CENTER IS SECURED AT THIS TIME MEETING'S HAVE BEEN CANCELLED JOHN 293-8081 NEXTEL 2752

10:32:37 Skytel [004571707] C ALPHA The White IST is ACTIVATED for New York. Do Not Call FEMA. Stand by for further instructions. Ben Strong-National US&R Program (34