Besides the earthquake in January, 2010, Haiti went through
other major earthquakes in the recent recorded history, namely
in 1770 and 1846. Although the previous earthquakes were
estimated as being even more powerful, the 7.0 magnitude
earthquake in 2010 was more damaging because the area was a lot
more populated than in the past. Still, the response to the
disaster was the fastest due to crowdsourcing and instant
messaging technology. The blog about Mission 4636, which is
owned by a lot of people and kept updated by Robert Munro from
when he was coordinating the Mission 4636 efforts, describes how
a free phone number (4636), a lot of volunteer effort
(international, from Haitians in Diaspora, but mostly local
Haitians) and also paid workers played a central role in the
recovery period that followed after the disaster. The affected
people sent around 80.000 messages through 4636, asking for
help. Those messages were translated from Haitian Creole (or
Kreyol), geolocated, categorized by level of emergency and