The radio bands were active with ham operators patching through calls from people in the affected area, an instance of helping from a distance that I had no way to emulate.

Hurricane Katrina inspired some of the same thoughts, not just in me, but in many others. And some of them were ingenious enough to figure out how to use the Internet to help.

Try the Web site www.scipionus.com. You'll see a Gulf Coast map studded with markers, and links to more-detailed maps of the most-damaged areas. Click a marker for more information about what's on that spot, often a house.

So I can view a Bay St. Louis map and see an overall view of the area. When I click on one of the markers at random, I see "Rev. Richard, Alice, and Tim Jones evac'd to Birmingham, AL," along with their e-mail address. Each marker represents a specific location, and as people contribute information about these locations, it gets folded into the growing map.

Not only that, but the maps, which are based on data from the Google Maps service, come with sliders so you can zoom in to get detailed street views. The map of Metairie, La., is so crowded with markers that you have to zoom in tight to separate one from another.

Here's one: "1.5' water in house after levee break."

And another: "Brittany Drive is good. Not much wind or water damage."

What scipionus.com offers is a live, updatable map that grows every hour as people supply news. Can you imagine what a help this must be to residents now forced out of the area who wonder what has happened to their homes and businesses? This Web site was created by two software engineers in Austin, Texas, relatively far from the scene.

Up in New York state, a blogger name Kathryn Cramer studied similarities between a Google Earth photograph and a news photo of the same area and realized the two could be combined. Almost instantly, her Web site (www.kathryncramer.com) became a collaborative information source on how to wed incoming photographs, many of them from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, to the existing Google Earth database.

The images, many posted in the Google Earth Current Events Community forum, are created by people around the country who use photo manipulation software to overlay current imagery onto the Google Earth map, so that the damage appears inside a view of the city. This helps provide context to news accounts that show images but can't convey the broad picture given by maps.

Take a look at the Web site oregonstate.edu/~holtt. You'll see a series of images manipulated by blogger Tim Holtt. Move your mouse over them and they toggle from "before" to "after" shots of places like Bay St. Louis and Gulfport; click an image and you'll discover it's zoomable and will take you right on top of the damage.

Seeing what was happening, Google joined in, releasing new photographs of the areas affected and posting links to many of the overlays its users had created.

What a fine commentary on technology adapting to an emergency, and on the creativity of people with powerful tools who put them together to help others.