Finding people after a disaster
When a major disaster separates families — an earthquake, a hurricane, a flood — one of the first and most painful questions is simply "is my loved one safe?" This page points you to the official, trustworthy ways to register someone as safe or search for someone who is missing, and explains where DeKalb ARES fits in.
DeKalb ARES is a communications service. In a disaster we pass traffic for served agencies — Emergency Management, the Red Cross, the EOC — when normal phone and internet are down. We do not operate a public missing-persons database, and we are not a substitute for 911, Emergency Management, or the Red Cross. If you are searching for someone, start with the official tools below.
If this is a life-or-death emergency
Call 911. If you are reporting someone trapped, injured, or in immediate danger, emergency services and rescue teams are the right channel — not a website. In DeKalb County, non-emergency coordination runs through DeKalb County Emergency Management (DEMA), and 2-1-1 (call or visit 211online.org) connects you to local disaster and human services in Georgia.
Official reunification tools
These are run by the agencies whose mission is reuniting families. They are free, staffed, and built to handle sensitive information responsibly. Use these first.
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→ American Red Cross — Contact & Locate Loved Ones
The Red Cross is the lead agency for U.S. disaster reunification. Register yourself as safe, or search for a relative inside a domestic disaster area.
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→ ICRC Restoring Family Links
For people separated across borders by disaster, conflict, or migration. Free, confidential, available in 150+ countries. Use the Online Tracing tool to open a case.
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→ Red Cross — International Reconnecting Families
The U.S. entry point into Restoring Family Links when a loved one is in another country.
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→ Radio Relay International — I Am Safe
The amateur-radio welfare-message system: when phone and internet are down, operators relay standardized "I am safe" radiograms out of the disaster area through the traffic net. This is the channel DeKalb ARES and shelters actually use on the air.
Citizen-run "person finder" sites
After a big disaster, volunteers often stand up their own search sites within hours — for example, Venezuela Te Busca, built by a single volunteer after the June 2026 Caracas earthquakes, which registered tens of thousands of people in a day. These grassroots tools can genuinely help, and during a specific event they are often where the most current crowd-sourced information lives.
But they are unofficial and unverified. Treat them as a complement to the Red Cross and ICRC channels above, not a replacement — and keep the cautions below in mind.
Disasters draw fraud. Bad actors scrape these sites to target frightened families with fake "I found them, send money" messages, phishing links, and bogus donation pages. Protect yourself:
- No legitimate reunification service charges a fee or asks for payment to "release" a loved one.
- Be cautious posting phone numbers or addresses publicly — share only what's needed.
- Verify anyone claiming to have found your relative through an official channel before sending money or personal details.
- Prefer the official tools above when the same information is available there.
For DeKalb ARES members
If you are operating during an activation, reunification traffic is handled the same way as any other served-agency traffic: through the tasking and message-handling procedures in our Activation SOP, under the direction of the EC and the served agency. For welfare-message traffic, use the RRI "I Am Safe" forms; the Digital Modes page has step-by-step instructions for sending them over Winlink or by email. Do not field-improvise a separate public database. Our role is to move the served agency's information accurately — typically into the Red Cross system — not to create a parallel one. Watch the status pill and alert banner on the home page for the current posture and any event-specific instructions.
This page is informational. DeKalb ARES does not collect or store missing-persons reports. For an active case, use the official tools above or contact local Emergency Management.