Blogging the Quake

The intensity of the October 8, 2005 earthquake in NWFP and Kashmir and the ensuing scale of destruction, death and misery stunned the entire nation. Within hours of the earthquake, the country geared up for the largest relief operation ever to be organised in the history of Pakistan. Fuelled by an enthusiastic spirit to serve and volunteer, several people took to the internet to mobilise the online community. There could not have been a better place to start, in order to reach millions of Pakistanis and concerned individuals across the country and around the world, than the blogosphere.

Leading from the front, the Help Pakistan blog was set up by Dr Awab Alvi, an orthodontist practicing in Karachi. More popularly known by his online moniker, “Teeth Maestro”, Dr Alvi’s basic aim was to motivate the online community to click on the Google ads placed on the blog. However, when Google decided that it clashed with their terms of service, the Help Pakistan blog sans Google ads, evolved into a full fledged website.

The Donate a Dollar for Pakistan campaign featured on the website, which began in October and continued for months thereafter, turned out to be a huge success as countless bloggers (and non-bloggers) joined in the effort and helped in promoting the cause.

Pak Quake was another such blog initiated by Kashif Aziz, “I started the blog in the early hours of October 9 as soon as it was evident that the earthquake had caused destruction on a much wider scale than what was perceived earlier. I went for blogging because I consider it to be a powerful tool.” With a total of 193 posts in October alone, Pak Quake featured personal accounts of people engaged in relief work, vivid descriptions of the damage and destruction, which were not available through the mainstream media, as well as updated information on what was needed by the different NGOs working in the affected areas. This blog also featured complaints from various people regarding the absence of rescue and relief workers in their areas.One noteworthy point was that all the posts were categorised – earthquake reports, relief work, victims, missing people and the like. Over 70 websites linked themselves to Pak Quake according to an estimate by Technorati, which says a great deal about the impact of this blog alone. Consequently, this blog was also quoted on high profile websites such as those of the Economist, Guardian and MSNBC.

When disasters such as earthquakes strike, another form of relief work is helping affected people cope with the trauma. Raheel Lakhani, a 19 year old student from Karachi, set up a blog entitled H.O.P.E. (Handing over Positive Energy) to ‘transfer some hope and positivity across the nation’. The posts made on H.O.P.E included feature articles, true stories and poems written by contributors and dedicated to the victims of the October 8 earthquake. The blog also featured a heart-rending story of a young female student who died beneath the rubble of her school, scribbling away her fears on an open notebook beside her. According to Raheel, there were quite a few visitors to his blog, but the turnout wasn’t impressive. “This blog wasn’t only about collecting money; it was also about injecting positive energy amongst the citizens of Pakistan as a whole. I have seen that where you have to read long posts, use your brains and think about it, bloggers in general don’t pay much attention,” he explained. Nonetheless, the well-designed buttons for linking to H.O.P.E were picked up by many Pakistani bloggers.

The Karachi and Lahore Metro bloggers also deserve to be applauded for the contributions their blogs made. Blurbs of news items pertaining to the earthquake which appeared in major daily newspapers were posted regularly along with any new information received about the different means to volunteer, such as the PAF Museum initiative in Karachi. Lists of items needed for Eid packages for earthquake affected children were also put up, while the views and concerns of different bloggers, who had volunteered in the affected areas, proved insightful and informative.

Lahore Metblog featured more personalised posts related to the earthquake, as most of its members not only felt the strong tremors but had visited Margalla Towers during their trips to Islamabad. Several bloggers shared their sentiments on visiting the site of the fallen towers, followed by urgent appeals to donate and volunteer and provided contact numbers of organisations in need of manpower.

Many people also put up ‘earthquake bands’ on their blogs which linked to an extensive website dedicated to information dissemination about donations, relief and rehabilitation. Harris bin Khurram, who created the website, explained how his personal blog was used for relief efforts, “Personal Blogs played a vital role in collecting relief goods and providing volunteers. Many people were also publishing snapshots of the affected areas for people to see. Ejaz Asi, an IT professional from Indus Valley set off to Muzaffarabad and I installed an SMS gateway to post his experiences directly on my blog without any delay. It became obvious that blogs represent the existence of non-professional journalists providing valuable information.”

Overall, these ‘non-professional journalists’ did a commendable job as Saad Hilal, a university student clarified, “I got more news from blogs than from TV channels. The information about volunteers required at different places inspired me to go and help and the list of medicines given on blogs encouraged me to tell friends and family about them and collect them for different organisations.”

Tech-savvy bloggers came up with their own creative ways to contribute to the relief efforts. Many Web designers offered their services, free of charge, to help design and put up sites for relief organisations and individuals looking to coordinate volunteers and donations.

Countless people used their blogs to express their thoughts on what they were seeing around them. Asma Mirza, a graduate from Islamabad, recorded her initial thoughts about the earthquake on her blog, “Reflection of my Soul.” Her descriptions made the earthquake seem horrifyingly real and close to all her readers. “The first thought that came to my mind was that someone is bulldozing our house. The tremors were so severe that the walls of the house were literally moving and things began to fall off our walls and window sills.” The blog also contained lists of items that were urgently needed, as well as high-resolution satellite photographs of the quake-stricken areas and updates on the progress of relief work.

Talha Masood, an IT professional based in Islamabad, sent shudders through the blogosphere by publishing close-range photographs of the ill-fated Margalla Towers on his blog, “My Cosmos.” His earthquake related posts also talked about the psychological aftermath of the disaster – sleep deprivation in people residing in Islamabad as well as the fear of living in high rise buildings.

Blogs afforded a great deal of flexibility to writers publishing almost daily ‘reporter’s diaries’, discussing the relief work and problems encountered such as inaccessibility of certain areas, as they witnessed them first-hand. Many bloggers even managed to post from their laptops while travelling to and from these areas.

For readers, particularly Pakistanis and even concerned non-Pakistanis living abroad, these blogs provided up-to-date and detailed information regarding the rescue and relief operations, along with the personal and heart-warming experiences of volunteers as they helped the nation get back on its feet after the biggest natural disaster in its history.

Blog Quake Day

Desipundit, an Indian group blog called on the blogosphere to mark October 26, 2005 as a Blog Quake Day. Spider got in touch with Ashweeta Patnaik, one of the Desipundit bloggers to learn more about it.

1) What was the basic aim behind this day?
The aim was to bring attention to the fact that relief efforts in South Asia were far from over and that thousands of people suffering still needed our help. We requested bloggers to make a small post about the earthquake and direct their readers to suitable avenues for donating to the relief efforts. The idea was that every single dollar contributed, multiplied by the vast numbers of bloggers, would go a long way in helping people rebuild their lives. No matter how small our blogs and how few our readers, the words we write and the way we use our blogs can have far-reaching consequences. The effort also was not just to pass around a collecting jar, but to also disseminate information.

2) Would you say you achieved your purpose?
The response was overwhelming, as over a hundred bloggers participated. Although there is no exact data available, we hope that each of the participants would have contributed some amount to relief organisations. More importantly, we hope that those who read the many Blog Quake Day posts were made aware of the urgency of the situation and were inspired to donate in some small way.A pleasant consequence of the Blog Quake Day effort was that it brought us a lot of goodwill from the Pakistani blogosphere. Desipundit very rarely gets a chance to interact with the Pakistani blogosphere, therefore the many e-mails we got, thanking us and blessing us for this initiative, were heart-warming.

3) How do you think such days can help towards mobilising relief efforts?
We believe that setting a day apart like this can unite the blogosphere for a single cause. When disaster strikes, people everywhere are horrified by its aftermath and want to help in some way. But often, constraints of time and money prevent us from doing so. We get caught up in our own lives and forget to help.

Blog Quake Day will focus the attention of the blogosphere to that issue for one day. In a ripple effect, information is disseminated and spreads far and wide. The idea is that, as a blogger goes through his regular blogs that day, he will encounter the issue at every corner and might be inspired to help. And small amounts of help (whether monetary or in kind) are good enough – because when multiplied with the sheer number of bloggers, they can create a force to be reckoned with.