Charting the Catastrophe: Map Matches Earthquake Videos to Location

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Track the YouTube movies and Flickr images that poured in after the quake.

Courtesy Esri

The cameras started rolling even as the ground was still shaking during Friday’s earthquake. Can’t keep all the videos straight? Neither can we. Cue the map.

The eyewitness reports have flooded in from all corners of Japan. But where exactly is Sendai, and what are camera lenses seeing in that city? Esri, a geolocation company, was curious, so they followed the trail of pictures, videos and tweets from town to town. As all types of media found its way online to detail the destruction, the company used geographic information to chart where each dispatch was coming from.

(More on TIME.com: See photos of the devastation in Japan)

The result is an addictive mashup of YouTube videos, Flickr photos, and tweets from the front lines of the disaster. Pinpoint where each quake and aftershock struck, then see the damage from the media mavens who took pictures or video in the aftermath.  It’s crowdsourcing at its most heartbreaking.

Click here for the mashup map of photos and videos from the quake.

(More on TIME.com: See how you can help the victims)