Tsunami Heroes Receive Award
Prestigious state awards for disseminating information went this year to eight persons or groups. Among the recipients was an diving instructors' Internet site. After the tsunami hit in December, they published badly-needed information about Finns caught up in the disaster.
The private Finnish web site, www.sukellus.fi, listed missing and found Finns in the immediate aftermath of the December tsunami. The site is run by diving enthusiasts.
After the tsunami hit Thailand, a group of Finnish diving instructors based there toured temples, hospitals and hotels around the clock compiling a list of Finns that have been found and missing. This information was then sent to Finland, where the web site was updated.
The site was for a long time the only source of information about loved ones for concerned relatives in Finland. The Finnish government refused for a long time to publish a list of missing Finns citing privacy reasons.
The Ministry of Education, that handed out the 10,000-euro award, said that the divers' Internet pages showed how the World Wide Web can be used to provide data fast and under rapidly changing circumstances.
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