Strangers connect, form helponline

From across continents, strangers are sharing notes to help tsunami victims. In the depths of the blogosphere, are letters, precise locations of donation drop-boxes in Mumbai or Bangalore to names and numbers of doctors offering free medical treatment in Tamil Nadu.

This online webspace for free posting of thoughts, ideas and personal journals has quickly forged a global tsunami relief network.

At tsunamihelp.blogspot.com, the scattered relief effort worldwide shrinks into one crowded user-friendly forum. Here are appeals for relief workers in Sri Lanka scrambling to collect milk powder for 80,000 families, 25,000 tents, 100,000 mats and 500,000 water purification tablets; appeals to attend a tsunami aid collection drive for Indian victims behind Tekka Mall in Singapore; hospitals in Phuket pleading for shoes, shorts and T-shirts, in sizes large enough for foreigners.

A posting on The Bridge Foundation in Bangalore promises: “We will send a taxi to your house to collect anything that you would like to donate to tsunami victims.’’

‘‘Nicobar area is worst hit,’’ states a SEEDS field report from relief workers camping in Port Blair. ‘‘These being islands in the middle of the ocean, many bodies did not wash back ashore. There is no NGO doing work in the Andaman and Nicobar so far.’’

Strangers have gathered helplines and addresses to donate money in USA, Germany, Spain, Ireland, India and Sri Lanka. There are postings on how to send aid to Chennai, from lists of large organisations to a charitable trust that will manage shelter for 30 to 40 children abandoned after the calamity.

A blogger, Krishna has posted the story of Udavum Karangal, a Chennai-based organisation that needs money for a village it adopted near Cuddalore. ‘‘Now it takes the world to raise this village,’’ he says. Bala has posted an online forum where people from Phuket are posting messages to loved ones to say they are okay.