Tech solutions come to the rescue after Cape Town university fire

Firemen walk through the burnt out remains of Jagger Library at the University of Cape Town in Cape Town, South Africa. In addition to the list built by Adams, the University of Cape Town posted pleas for help on social media and its website, and used a Google Form to allocate students to hotels that had offered rooms to people evacuated from campus accommodation. — Reuters

JOHANNESBURG: When South African tech entrepreneur Lisa Adams passed hundreds of students stranded on the roadside with suitcases after fire tore through their campus in Cape Town this week, she raced home to her laptop to help.

Within hours, she had compiled a Google Maps list containing the names of the dozens of hotels, restaurants, counselling services and places of worship that had opened their doors to the 4,000 students affected by the wildfire.