The desperate quest to find loved ones started just minutes after the earthquake, as cell phones rang unanswered from beneath the rubble of Haiti's best hotel.
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A few hours later, the search went online with a Facebook page dedicated to the Hotel Montana. It was created by three siblings on Long Island, New York, looking for their missing uncle. Strangers immediately began to post names and photographs of their relatives. By the next morning, the site had received more than 50 messages from frantic families.
As the days passed and the death toll climbed, the number of members on the page grew until it reached 17,427 people from around the world. They called themselves "the family." They adopted a profile picture of a rock inscribed with the word "Hope." And they vowed to stick together until every last member of their online tribe was brought home, alive or dead.
"Though we're all ready for this night to end and a faint glimpse of sunlight to illuminate the horizon, I'm fairly confident from getting to know you over the past several weeks that you're ready to stand together," wrote the site's Tennessee-based moderator, Bob Allen, nearly two months after the quake. "Till the last one is home."
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SOURCE: AP - Rukmini Callimachi
