The Google Maps team has been working hard with partner GeoEye to push out an updated imagery of Haiti. The update includes imagery taken at 10:27 am EST on Wednesday, January 13 – approximately 15 hours after the earthquake hit.
You can download the KML file to view in Google Earth and the layer is available for viewing in Google Maps as well.
The imagery is primarily for Port-Au-Prince. Google says they’ll add more imagery, but you only need to download the file once.
Here’s what the imagery looks like in Google Earth:
For the citizens of Haiti, real-time search may have arrived just in time. The 7.0 earthquake that shook the poverty-stricken nation hit just 5 hours ago, but you can easily find information about the disaster, and, most importantly organizations to donate to.
On each of the top four search engines, searching “Haiti relief” yielded extremely useful information. Google and Bing were the most comprehensive:
Haiti-related search terms were already included in query suggestion features on Google and Bing:
Meanwhile, on Twitter, Haiti is the top trending term.
