Feds get rush delivery of Japan quake pictures
Commercial satellite companies dropped everything and rushed before and after images of Japan to U.S. government agencies within an hour of the earthquake.
In the hour following the massive earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan, commercial satellite imagery firms began supplying the U.S. government with updated pictures of the disaster area, reports Colin Clark at DOD Buzz.
Firms such as Geoeye and DigitalGloble dropped all their existing jobs and began collecting images of Japan that were then moved in near real time to the National Geospatial Agency, which in turn made them available to the Defense Department and other federal agencies.
The before and after images were then loaded onto laptop computers, and distributed to U.S. search and rescue teams heading for Japan.