Sunnyvale, CA --- August 28, 2006: DCRE Labs announced today plans to close down the Katrina Survivors Database section of its FamilyMessages.Org website on the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, though the service will remain ready to support future disaster recovery efforts as needed. "The site's usefulness to Katrina survivors has finally dropped off to the point where we feel comfortable in taking the Hurricane Katrina Survivors list down," said Dan Chaney, developer of the site and president of the site's corporate sponsor, DCRE Labs. "We had planned to take it down back in October of 2005 but received several calls and emails from people who were still using the site to search for missing loved ones. Lately, the traffic has leveled off and the anniversary of Katrina seemed an appropriate time."

As one of the first survivor Web sites to go up within hours of Hurricane Katrina's landfall, FamilyMessages.Org provided a means for families and survivors to find one another by posting and searching the website's database. "That proved to meet an unexpectedly critical need, especially when Red Cross Volunteers in the Astrodome and other shelters used it as their initial data entry system.", said Chaney, "That's one of the more surprising lessons learned from Katrina: The need for clear communication immediately after a disaster cannot be understated. In this case, it was a conduit between 22,000 survivors and the people looking for them."

Though the basic system was designed and deployed within 48 hours, DCRE Labs has continued to develop the system over the last year. While working with other recovery organizations during disasters such as the Pakistan Earthquake (10/08/05) and the July 17, 2006 earthquake in Jakarta, DCRE has made the code freely available throughout the world and continued to fund its development. "Though we recognize the potential commercial applications for these newly developed technologies, DCRE Labs also recognizes a social responsibility towards those in need. We believe there is room to meet both our corporate business needs as well as our community outreach goals." DCRE Labs will offer a similar web-based disaster communication/recovery service in late 2006, aimed primarily at medium- to large-businesses that are taking a closer look at business continuity and disaster recovery planning. "We've seen how these tools can be used in a major disaster and we've learned how to set them up before the event. The end result is a reduced disaster impact and a faster recovery time," said Chaney. "With disasters, it isn't a question of 'if', only 'when'. The same holds true for the preparation."