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74 After the earthquake, the text messages came streaming in to 4636reports of trapped people, fires, polluted water sources, and requests for food, water and medical supplies. Hundreds of volunteers translated them from Creole and French into English, tagged them with a location and passed them on to aid agencies on the ground. Yet not one of the volunteers was anywhere near Haiti. The 4636 texting service is part of a new generation of web-based efforts to help disaster relief that has emerged from the revolution in texting, social networking and crowdsourcing. Its impact on the ground is tangible . For example, a Haitian clinic texted 4636 that it was running low on fuel for its generator. Within 20 minutes the Red Cross said it would resupply. 4636 is run by a small organization called Ushahidi.com, originally set up in Kenya to gather reports of violence after the 2008 election. Within days of the earthquake on 12 January that flattened Haitis capital Port-au-Prince and numerous surrounding towns, it had set up a Haitian operation and recruited hundreds of volunteers to help translate messages, many of them Haitians living in the U.S. The service is free, courtesy of Digicell, Haitis largest mobile network operator, which had 70 per cent of its network running within 24 hours of the quake. Nicolas di Tada, who helped set up 4636 on the ground in the first days after the disaster, says that was the easy part. The challenge was making responders on the ground aware of us. A stroke of luck made a big difference. One of the first texts was from a hospital which had 200 beds, and doctors, nurses and medical supplies on standby, but no patients, because hardly any relief agencies knew they were there. Forwarding that message on told a large number of organization about 4636. Now, radio stations help spread the word. | 
