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Google docs connect Mumbai after blasts

With phone lines jammed, Mumbai residents connect on the Web.
With phone lines jammed, Mumbai residents connect on the Web.

As night falls in the locked down city of Mumbai, where three blasts hit late Wednesday evening, residents looking out for fellow Mumbaikars heading home on that long commute are posting offers of help by the hundreds on a growing Google spreadsheet.

The spreadsheet was set up by Delhi resident Nitin Sagar, and Mumbai residents are filling it out quickly; listing their location, Twitter handles, phone numbers, and the help they can give to anyone affected by the blasts. 

Several users have offered overnight house stays, the use of their car, and listed their blood types under the #here2help tab. The spreadsheet also has #needhelp, Blood group, Missing, and Injured tabs which residents are still filling out.

With phone lines jammed, Mumbai residents connect on the Web.
With phone lines jammed, Mumbai residents connect on the Web.

Twitter users outside the country are chiming in as well with varied offerings: 

@sahdnhig: can help, blood A+VE, O+ve, place to stay, food@touchaddict: Can give my flight pass to anyone wanting to travel to Mumbai till tomorrow@SyedMSultan: If you have friend and relative in USA and cant get to them on phone. tweet me and I will call them upsashworld@mail.ru: In case if you need to call anybody in Europe just contact me through mail and provide details, i can pass your message.@anubhasawhney: Am in office at CST for the next 2 hours. Will head to Worli. Can offer people a lift and a place to stay.@beingpractical: Going to Thane by 9:30; Can drop

Sagar first heard news of the blasts on Twitter, and noticed dozens of posts immediately followed, offering help. "I realized if this information wasn't collated soon, the use of it would be lost," he told me. So he created the Google spreadsheet and tweeted a link, which was retweeted and soon went viral. 

A Ushahidi-powered help website has also gone live which shows blast locations, help needed and help available stations via an interactive map.

Tweets from Mumbai residents, people on the ground at the blast sites, and the media are streaming under the hashtags #here2help and #mumbai blasts.

Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai and other major Indian cities have been put on high alert.

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Nidhi Subbaraman writes about tech and science at msnbc.com. Follow her on Twitter and Google+ and join our conversation on Facebook.