Google comes in handy for victims:

Taking inspiration from the online volunteers, Google, NASA and Carnegie Mellon University had by Saturday night made the effort more formal, incorporating nearly 4,000 posthurricane images into the Google Earth database (at www.earth.google.com) for public use.

“It was 100 percent a reaction to what they were doing,” John Hanke, a general manager who is in charge of the Google Earth service, said on Sunday. “They knew about the NOAA data before Google did.”

[Update 09:37 UCT: The link to the story in the NYT.]