Sunny and clear in Detroit, flooded and rising in New Orleans.

My wife Mary Ann and I sat dumbfounded in front of the TV last Thursday night looking at images of New Orleans. She mentioned to me that 'Yahoo! should send down computers to 'help folks find folks' - I agreed, and knew someone probably had something up their sleeve, but I had no idea who. Meanwhile, I had registered with the local Detroit chapter of the Red Cross to get on a list to get trained, hoping I could get sent down there to help.

After a somewhat frustrating day in the office,(Thanks biz ops. Thanks SOX), I checked the backyard page and there it was:

Yahoo! is partnering with our friends at SBC to equip the Houston Astrodome with internet access for the many hurricane victims who are currently stranded there....."

A perfect option to get involved.

I discussed the opportunity with my Todd Porch(my boss in Dallas) and we decided to hit this together. "We're going to see some shit down there, man" he said. "Looking forward to sharing it with you". "Same, my man", I replied.

Saturday I flew out of Detroit Metro at 6:03 am and landed in Houston at 8:15 central. Porch, as promised, was waiting with his SUV, and we headed to the Astrodome (Todd drove down from Dallas - a 3.5 hour drive. Do the math on when he left his house).

The Astrodome is one of the first domes built. It is an aging grey and white facility, with girders propping the dome itself. It is mammoth - and it is packed. As we head down the concrete slope and down to the floor, we can see there is not an inch of space to spare: Cots, blankets, diaper boxes, diapers, empty cans, donut boxes and people as far as the eye can see. Todd and I walk the area, soaking in the scene, getting a feel for situation. It is surprisingly calm.

We get to the ACT room and get briefed by Nicole Leverich, an extremely strong and very capable leader, who is a PR person in Sunnyvale. She leads the group in discussing our role here in Houston, and goes through what we *think* our role will be for the next several days: We set up computers, guide folks through the internet and try to make connections to their loved ones. And oh yeah: We should do anything else we need to do to help these folks. We all agreed, and spend the next couple of hours getting ready for our guests.

After two or so hours, we opened the room. I can say with honesty, it took me sometime to get adjusted to the task at hand. Typically, I welcomed people, assured them we would provide what ever we could to help them find their loved ones, and then steered them in the direction of the computer, and asked if I could get them started. The typically said "no." I realized later this was a huge disconnect on my end. I had assumed these folks knew a bit about the internet, maybe a bit about computers - and that was, realistically, a gross assumption. What I realized moving through the process was that these people wanted help, desperate help, but most hadno experience, or even understanding of computers and more importantly, the internet. They said "no" to help they probably because they were embarrassed to say 'yes".

After seeing a few people get up from the computer minutes after sitting down I started to realize my terrible mistake and began to "drive" - sitting down with the keyboards for them, entering their information into the ACY familymessages.org site (mostly as "I am safe" even though I was not so sure they were). I also spent much time registering their lost loved ones into the system as 'missing'. I also spent time registering them into the many other databases for the lost and found: International Red Cross, MSNBC, CNN - even Craig's list. I also did some job searches, and tried to get them into the FEMA site. *No biased reporting: the FEMA site was by far the worst organized and challenging site to enter a survivors information.

I sensed relief with many of our "clients" (as we began to call them - better than "refugees?" no?) After all - they got their message out there that they were safe. And they posted the name of those that were missing - the biggest sign of loving someone: "I lost you, and I am looking for you!"

The first day ended up with much data entry, a few leads for our clients - but not a ton of successes. We sat down at the end of our session with a HUGE box of names of the Astrodome survivors. We then realized that this box, filled with ripped paper and scraps, with scrawled names of many or close to all of the people here in the stadium, were not in the 'system' yet. So how were people to find them? The call for more volunteers went out for this getting this together.

The second day was much better. Nicole ended up making some recommendations to Filo and team in Sunnyvale the night before based on what we had observed during the first day. One of frustrating things we realized is that there were multiple sites folks were entering their lost and found info in, and none of them talked to each other. Therefore, someone could be looking on MSNBC for the missing, but the safe were entering into CNN. So our search technology folks built an engine to 'scrape' all the sites being used. This turned out to be a huge improvement, with much better results.

One of my first clients that day was a family looking for their brother. Like many of our clients, they also had a list of other people they were looking for. These were either cousins, friends or strangers someone on the floor needed info on. I did not have any success with any of their more immediate family, but did end of finding, through the Yahoo! search site, information on the location of their cousins. They were located at the Dallas center, and they were looking for them, too. Some good news finally!

The most heart wrenching client of mine was an emotional young lady looking for her mother. She explained that she and her Mother were somehow separated during the evacuation of New Orleans, but was thankful her mother had called on her cell just before the cell service went down. Through that last conversation, she knew her mother was staying at a Holiday Inn in one of the Parishes. However, she was now desperate after learning that this certain Parish was eventually evacuated, and had suffered a jail break during the flooding. Gangs had killed the district attorney and the police chief. She was not sure if her mother was safe.

We spent much time using my cell phone to call the Holiday Inn in her Parish. There was no answer. We called the main Holiday Inn 1-800 numbers, and they had also tried to contact the Holiday, with no avail. Thinking through main areas of contact, we spent some time calling the various surrounding churches, trying to relay the message to the Holiday Inn that her Daughter was safe, and she was looking for her. But no one answered. Finally, we called the city Police Department. A human answered the phone - but not a pleasant one. We asked that she pass along the message to the Holiday Inn, but the dispatcher did not promise. I could not blame her - considering the situation. We tried a few other avenues, but came up empty.

I passed along to her all the numbers we had called, wrote everything down in detail, and made sure she registered with SBC for a phone mailbox so she could leave a number where she was located. I tried to reassure her as she went tearfully on her way. We had tried, but were not successful.

We live in an America with robust search and instant results, but some folks were looking for people that would never be found.