I learned about the massive earthquake at 7:00 A.M. EST and immediately got in touch with the Ushahidi Tech Team to set up an Ushahidi-Chile platform. I then reached out to my colleagues from The Fletcher School at Tufts University and others who contributed their time to the Haiti deployment. They are are now responding to the earthquake in Chile and tsunami effected countries. This time, however, the volunteers are trained and the Ushahidi Tech Team simply cloned the Ushahidi-Haiti version for Chile. We're already busy customizing the deployment for Chile. So everything is actually moving twice as fast and so is the CrisisMappers Group.

[caption id="attachment_1581" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="Customizing Ushahidi-Chile"][/caption]

We all realize that this is a risk coming so soon after the massive efforts around the Haiti quake. But we didn't have all the answers then either. I will collaborate closely with the Fletcher/Tufts team and look for volunteer groups with universities in Mexico and Colombia, for example. I've already reached out to my good friend Oscar Salazar who launched the successful Ushahidi-Mexico platform and he is mobilizing his network of volunteers in Mexico. I'm also reaching out to our South American colleagues at GlobalVoices.

We've already set up a long code that individual can use to text in their location and urgent needs: +44 762.480.2524. Note that we are working with our partners to set up a short code for Chile. So the one listed here 4636 is not operational. Please standby for more information on a local short code. In the meantime, you can submit reports directly online here. You can also send an email to chile@ushahidi.com with specific location information and urgent needs.

We will provide further updates on this blog and also on our Twitter feed @ushahidi.