The world watched in horror as the scene was replayed over and over: a 30-foot wall of water ripping through Japanese villages such as Minamisanriku, leaving 10,000 of its 17,000 residents missing. But few felt the terror more deeply and personally than the family of 25-year-old Canon Purdy, who arrived in Japan the day the earth turned upside down.
“My sister ... is missing,” Purdy’s sister, Megan Walsh, wrote in a desperate Twitter message to TODAY’s Ann Curry, who arrived in Japan Saturday to cover the disastrous effects of the earthquake and resulting tsunami. “Please help with any news of evacuees.”
“I will do my best,” Curry tweeted back:
On Monday, moved by Purdy’s family’s plea and armed with a photograph of the teacher, Curry made her way to the middle school in what was left of Minamisanriku, which had been turned into a makeshift evacuation center.
The good news came a few moments later: “She’s OK,” and “somewhere outside,” other survivors told Curry. Taken to another refugee center, Curry found Purdy, along with the two other American teachers. All three were safe and sound.
Within minutes, Purdy used Curry’s phone to call her frantic family in San Francisco. “I’m totally OK,” she told her sister.
“It was a great relief,” Purdy told TODAY’s Matt Lauer. With no cell phone service after the tsunami and no hope of getting any “any time soon,” Purdy knew that there was no chance that she could reach her loved ones back in the United States to let them know that she had survived. “I had to tuck it away, and hope for the best,” she said. “And hope that they weren’t too worried, and try and do what I could here.”
Who said twitter was a bad idea!?