Red Cross Website Aims to Help Survivors, Families Get in Touch

GENEVA —  A Red Cross website to facilitate contact between survivors of the southern Asian tsunami disaster and their families was launched Wednesday.

The Swiss-based International Committee of the Red Cross said the site, www.familylinks.icrc.org, was already getting a response, and registrations were building up quickly as the site’s existence became known.

“It is important that both families at home and people in the tsunami region who have survived get to know about it quickly,” ICRC spokesman Florian Westphal said.

The site has special sections for the four worst-affected countries -- Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Thailand and India -- where the overwhelming majority of the deaths so far have been reported.

Tens of thousands of tourists escaping the winter chill in Europe and North America were at resorts around the region when Sunday’s huge underwater earthquake off the western tip of Indonesia caused the deadly waves.

A few thousand visitors from outside the region are still unaccounted for, and government disaster officials in Thailand say hundreds died there.

Registrations show people being sought who are from California, Canada’s Yukon Territory, Britain, France, Germany, Switzerland, Scandinavia, Japan and the Middle East.