Looking For Loved Ones Online

After 9-11, families desperate to find loved ones pinned photos on walls near Ground Zero.

After Hurricane Katrina, "virtual" walls went up across the Internet: families are posting poignant pleas and photos of the missing hoping to reach someone who has seen them, CBS News Correspondent Vince Gonzales reports.

Pointing to a photo album picture, Althea Edwards tells Gonzales, "This cousin right here, she's missing now."

In South Central Los Angeles, Edwards last heard from her aunt, uncle and cousin in New Orleans just as the hurricane hit.

"The water was already coming into the house. That was the last we heard from them," Edwards says.

So from her living room command post, she launched a cyber rescue mission, posting details about them on the Internet. She researched contact numbers for rescue agencies, and ordered relatives to keep calling until one of them got through.

"It's not a do-nothing time," Edwards says. "You've got to try to do something."

James Hanby used the Internet for a different type of rescue-related purpose. "What we have to offer -- our son's bedroom. What he'll (our son) do is he'll come stay with us."

James and Onica Hanby also went online not to ask for help, but to offer it. Like thousands of Americans, they are opening their hearts and homes to the newly homeless.

"These people have nothing and we feel like we have so much," a tearful Onica Hanby says.

Even though they're both unemployed with a 2-year-old, they're offering to share their small, two-bedroom apartment.

"We're here to help," Onica says.

They got a quick e-mail response from a California woman trying to relocate relatives from the disaster zone.

And this week Althea Edwards' prayers and e-mails were answered.

"It's wonderful," Edwards says crying.

Her family finally got through to the Highway Patrol and directed rescuers to the nearly submerged house. Her relatives were found alive and joined the thousands airlifted to safety.