In China, High-Tech Reunions

The hospital also set up tables and tents in a courtyard outside the main patient building for about 10 days. Volunteers from technology companies and other businesses provided at least 20 computers during peak times and telephone companies provided at least 30 phones.

"Although farmers don't have access to the Internet, there were so many volunteers and hotline operators with Internet access who could help them," Liao said. "If so many people had to search by themselves, they would have walked through all the patients' rooms and interrupted our work. The wards would look like a big market, with so many people."

One of the parents searching for children was Li Bo, from Wenchuan county, near the quake's epicenter. Li recalled learning that her daughter Huang Siyu, 12, had been injured and flown to the provincial capital of Chengdu. But she had no way of finding her.

Then, on May 17, a relative in Chengdu called to say he had checked the Internet and found the girl's name on the patient list at Huaxi Hospital.

The next day, a volunteer in the tents in front of the hospital led Li to her daughter's bedside on the second floor of Building No. 2. The girl's leg had been pinned under the rubble and had to be amputated after she was rescued.

"After I saw her, I held her and cried and cried. But my daughter comforted me saying, 'Mom, I can still walk with an artificial leg.' I had imagined that she was lying in bed, so lonely, but she was surrounded by volunteers," Li said. "I kneeled down to them, I was so thankful."

In Mianyang, residents of a giant tent city at the Jiu Zhou Sports Stadium had no Internet access. But each day a makeshift radio station broadcast names of the missing while telecom companies provided access to free phone calls. In front of a bulletin board full of fliers for missing children, computer science engineers set up two laptops to help enter into a database the names of people looking for relatives.

"Widespread mobile phone use and the Internet have brought about a big change in being able to share people's data so quickly," said Long Er, a software company employee who asked to be identified by his online name, and who with four colleagues started a Web site, http://www.512help.com, to help quake victims. "Ten years ago, it would have been impossible that so many resources would combine like this."

In Chengdu, people who dialed 114 for directory inquiries on their cellphones were connected to a hotline that grouped people in two categories: survivors and those in search of them. Callers' identities and phone numbers were registered, as well as detailed descriptions of the missing.

"We cooperate with hospitals, who give us their patient lists," said one 114 operator who declined to give his name. "I don't know how many people we've matched overall, but I match about 10 people a day."

Researcher Zhang Jie contributed to this report.