Desperate for News, Loved Ones Scour the Internet

Rachel Freemon watched the clock Thursday, mentally calculating the time difference between Sacramento and southern Asia. She was counting on an e-mail from her vacationing mother, Pamela Freemon, to arrive by day’s end.

Again and again, Rachel Freemon toggled between her home computer mailbox and the Internet, searching for any information. Her mother had promised to be back in touch Thursday, after last checking in on Christmas Eve.

Like thousands worldwide who have not been able to locate loved ones since the tsunami struck, the Freemon family hoped cyberspace would break the silence.

In a disaster that has left more than 125,000 dead, they and others have turned to the Internet to answer one question: Are their loved ones dead or alive?

As it has in past disasters, the Internet has been the key source for information, however spotty and incomplete at times.

At least half a dozen English-language sites have sprung up, offering international bulletin boards for desperate relatives and friends to look for their loved ones, and for survivors to check in and relieve their worries.

In Italy, a 14-year-old boy converted a personal website dedicated to the television show “The Simpsons” into a virtual gathering place for Italians seeking news.

Pleas have gone out for mothers, fathers, children, siblings, friends and co-workers to call, e-mail or send word in any way possible that they are OK.

“I am looking for 5 family members! Raymond, Betty, Melony, Casey & Matthew Reimer! They are from California! Please if you have any information contact me!” read one message on a CNN bulletin board.

“I am desperate to know where they are,” wrote another person seeking information about a brother, his wife and three daughters.

That family’s desperation ended Wednesday night, when the travelers arrived home in Irvine as scheduled after a trip to Myanmar and Thailand.

At least four Californians are confirmed dead and others are missing in the wake of massive waves set off by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake early Sunday morning in the Indian Ocean near the Indonesian island of Sumatra.

In a time when cellphones, satellites and the World Wide Web have conditioned people to stay in constant contact, the waiting has proved excruciating.

Katherine Salazar-Poss of San Francisco spent two days frantically sending e-mails, posting appeals and calling overseas to learn the fate of her college roommate and family, who were vacationing on the island of Phuket in Thailand at a resort that was destroyed.

Finally, at 12:30 a.m. Wednesday, the phone rang.

A stranger who had seen a chain e-mail was calling from Thailand.

“I picked up the phone and heard: ‘I’ve got good news. I’ve just seen Marilyn, Tom and Leif -- the Hopkins family -- and they’re safe,’ ” she said.

The Hopkinses, teachers at the American School in Shanghai whose son is a senior at UC Santa Cruz, had been aboard a dive ship that had left Phuket and was sailing near Myanmarwhen the earthquake hit.

They hadn’t felt it.

“For someone who doesn’t even know us to call from Thailand -- when it is so hard to get through -- we were overwhelmed by their kindness,” said Salazar-Poss.

For others, more than five days after the disaster struck, there were no answers.

By Thursday afternoon, with still no word from her father and stepmother on vacation in Thailand, Nicole Winter, 21, decided to try to get into her father’s Stockton house to find an accurate travel itinerary and recent photos to post online.

Craig Winter, 51, had left his daughter only one emergency number and sketchy details about his annual Christmas trip, which included a visit to Phuket.

She had called the number and left messages, even though she could not understand the language on the answering machine.

As she and her mother searched for ways to get into the locked house Thursday night, a neighbor came over.

Craig Winter was fine, the neighbor told them. He had e-mailed his dog-sitter to say so.

In Web postings, Californians and others gave details of travelers’ whereabouts, travel plans and the places they were last seen.

Some posted itineraries that would have put their friends far from danger zones. Such posts prompted one response on www.lonelyplanet.com urging Americans to check a map and “at least think before clogging up the emergency and international lines.”

Other inquiries by Americans, however, were specific and alarming.

“We are looking for our dear friend, Megan Hawley, who was in Phuket the morning of the earthquake,” wrote Nancy Olson of Lodi, Calif., on the BBC’s website. “She is 20 and brunette. Desperate to hear from her.”

Some seeking news said modern technology made it particularly hard to wait for information and hard to understand why travelers would not have contacted them.

Those who have gotten the best news -- that friends and family are safe -- said their relief was tempered by the scope of death and devastation.

“Part of the thing you’re going through when you’re hysterically trying to find out about your loved ones is: How can I be so focused on my grain of sand in this immense disaster?” said Salazar-Poss. “And yet I think it’s our human nature to do that. Now that they’ve been found, my focus is much larger in trying to help.”

For their part, the Freemons remained hopeful that there was an explanation why Pamela Freemon, who would know they were worrying about her, hadn’t let them know how she is.

Still, Rachel Freemon said, “It’s hard to believe there is no phone service, no way to reach us.”

In her last e-mail, Pamela Freemon, 57, told her daughter that she and her boyfriend planned to travel along coastal Malaysia and would be back in touch after several days.

“I’ve e-mailed her -- haven’t heard back,” Rachel Freemon said. “I’ve checked on maps on the Web to see where exactly she might have been. I’ve posted to a number of sites, checking CNN, the Red Cross all the time for answers. I’ve gone through the hospital lists.”

Now she can only wait.

“If she’s not calling and she could,” Rachel Freemon said, “she’s going to get a whopping when we get her back.”

Times staff writer Monte Morin contributed to this report.