A few days had passed since Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Louisiana coastline, and juniors Alana Kuhn and David Manchester were getting worried. Ronald Harper, a friend whom they met at an internship, was at Louisiana State University when the storm struck, and he wasn’t answering his cell phone.

Kuhn and Manchester sent Harper repeated e-mails over several days, but no response came. Finally, the two panicked friends posted a public message on Facebook, an online social network directory for students, to which they could only hope Harper would respond.

Several more days passed before Harper contacted Manchester and Kuhn to let them know he was okay.

When power outages and downed phone lines left New Orleans college students with few options for contacting friends and family, many turned to Web sites and online communities to contact friends and family.

Other students had similar stories. New Orleans native Melissa Barry used Facebook to contact friends from the Gulf Coast area for updates on their conditions.

Sophomore Zachary Elkaim returned from Tulane University in New Orleans to his home in Boca Raton, Fla., and used Facebook to learn how friends had fared in the storm.

“When normal lines of communication were down, it was nice to have a network already in place to make sure everyone was okay,” he said.

College students and others affected by Hurricane Katrina have communicated on the networking Web site Craigslist, which has created free message boards for New Orleans residents. The message boards allow people to find temporary housing or offer it to others, provide each other emotional support and post names of missing people.

A large group of Loyola University students used Craigslist to inform friends and family of its location.

“The caravan of students went to Istromua Baptist Church in Baton Rouge,” said one post. “Then some went to St. Andrews United Methodist church also in Baton Rouge.”

Students displaced by Hurricane Katrina are also using the Web to offer each other words of hope for the future. One Tulane student created a Facebook “I am attending (Blank) University in the fall of ’05, but will be back at Tulane in ’06!”