Thousands Join Search For Missing Malaysian Airliner From Home

FT LAUDERDALE (CBSMiami) - From her kitchen in Cooper City, Vernique Krup is searching for the lost Malyasian 777 airliner.

"If it slammed into a mountain, sooner or later someone is going to find it. If it slammed into the ocean, sooner or later something of it is going to float," Krup explained.

The former airline attendant spends about an hour a day combing satellite images of vast dark ocean searching for a needle in haystack. She spots a series of spots on the screen that's about 100 feet wide in real life.

"That's that biggest one I've seen so far."

The images come from a company called DigitalGlobe which is now bringing the search for the plane to the world. Shay Har-Noy with DigitalGlobe explained they have been using the technology since 2010.

"We realized that there was so many pixels that we just couldn't look through it all," he said.

The company has set-up a crowdsourcing site. Essentially asking everyone to scan thousands of images and tag a picture if you see something.

Krup showed CBS4 around the site.

"You've got, of course, the plane and here you've got raft."

If an image is tagged multiple times it is sent on to the search effort.

"The response has just been overwhelming." Har-Noy said.

In fact so many have joined the search the site actually crashed for a short time. Many of the people signing up are like Krup, looking to help. "

I feel actually that I'm trying to contribute to something. Nothing can compare to what the families are feeling right now" Krup said.

She doesn't expect to find anything, but it's not stopping her from looking. To her it's a lot better than doing nothing.
"The 777 is probably is one of our biggest aircraft. It's one of the most modern. It's one of the most beautiful planes to fly. So it's not acceptable to me that proof it disappeared and there is nothing to ask. IT's not acceptable. So because it's not acceptable then you participate," Krup said.

As of Wednesday two million people had begun searching DigitalGlobes images. Combined they've looked at more than 100 million images and so far tagged a half million suspicious objects.

Click Here if you would like to join the search.