Mainers use Net for news overseas Web sites, e-mail, connect families

PORTLAND – Mainers are using the Internet and e-mail to track news about friends and family who were missing after the tsunamis that have devastated southern Asia and Africa.

For Theodore Laitala, it was a day and a half before his sister-in-law Elizabeth Leonard was able to notify family members in Brunswick that she and her family had survived massive waves while vacationing in Phuket, Thailand.

Leonard, a Brunswick native, and her children escaped the onrushing waves by scrambling up rocky slopes to high ground, where they spent the night on a hillside.

Eventually, Leonard’s daughter sent word by e-mail that they were OK. Laitala said he suspects it was sent on a laptop through the hotel’s Internet service.

“We are all fine but have many tales to tell,” the e-mail said. “We just came off a hillside today and will sleep on a hotel floor tonight but feel very lucky. Please call Grandma and forward to others so they won’t worry.”

The Internet – through e-mail, Web logs, electronic bulletin boards and news photos from the region – has given Mainers a multitude of channels to search for news of relatives in the affected area.

Web sites and blogs have become the announcement boards and lost and founds for a disaster that has killed more than 120,000 people and left many thousands of people unaccounted for, including 2,000 to 3,000 Americans and thousands of others from Europe and elsewhere.

Communication to and from the region remains spotty, and those in hard-hit areas have to contend with badly damaged infrastructure.

Still, word has trickled out in e-mails and through cell phones using satellite linkups, buried lines or equipment safely on high ground.

Debbie Wilkinson of Falmouth spent hours huddled in front of her computer screen, searching for news of her brother, Maine native Michael A. Martini, who was vacationing in Thailand when the tsunami hit.

Wilkinson worried that her brother, who had planned to go to beach resorts, had been hurt or killed. She didn’t know his exact itinerary.

She posted queries on the Internet and scanned online pictures, hoping to catch a glimpse of her 47-year old brother. She found many others doing the same thing, hoping for word from a missing loved one.

On Wednesday, she got a call from her brother after his flight landed upon his arrival in New Jersey. Martini told his sister that he had no idea she would be worrying, and that he was nowhere near the shoreline when the tsunami hit.

“He got hit a few times for not calling home,” Wilkinson said.