Already some 30 Chinese groups representing professionals, alumni and associations from various provinces, have raised about $50,000 for the newly created Atlanta China Earthquake Fund Drive Committee, Zhou said.

"It is very touching. It moved me very much," he said, choking back emotion.

This weekend the Chinese relief committee planned to solicit donations at Chinatown and Asian supermarkets around the metro area. It will set up an effort at Zoo Atlanta, said zoo spokeswoman Keisha Hines Davis .

As an international city, Atlanta is accustomed to lending a hand when major disasters strike. The city is home to CARE, the Carter Center, and scores of churches and relief groups.

Communities reach out

Metro Atlanta's civic and ethnic groups organize in various ways to help victims of natural disasters, war-torn villages and poverty-stricken hometowns.

The city's immigrant enclaves stretch from Buford Highway, home to large populations from Mexico and Central America, to Clarkston, where refugees from sub-Saharan Africa have settled. Duluth is the area's new Little Korea. Even Zoo Atlanta has an international link. Prized pandas, Lun-Lun and Yang-Yang hail from the Sichuan Province where the 7.9 magnitude earthquake struck.

Atlanta's Chinese community, estimated at 100,000, makes good use of mass e-mails to keep abreast of developments in such disasters as Monday's quake. The many educated professionals — engineers, computer programmers and students — surf Mandarin-language chat rooms and post blogs.

Friends flooded Lian Colburn of Alpharetta with calls and e-mails asking about her family in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province.

"It's just devastating. It's unbelievable. It's beyond words," she said.

The former IT architect manager for UPS created a Web site to respond.

In her blog, Colburn describes how her sister's car started jumping when the earthquake hit. She pulled over, checked the tires and turned off the engine. "The car was still jumping!!!" Colburn wrote. "That's when her sister heard people yelling, "Earthquake!"

At the Atlanta Chinatown Mall, Victoria Xue sat in the food court with family and friends watching a wide-screen TV with satellite news from China.

"We just watch TV everyday," said Xue, who is from Beijing, in northern China, far from the epicenter.

While Chinese have banded together through cyberspace to raise money here, other immigrant groups use other means to organize.

The estimated 100,000 Korean-Americans in metro Atlanta count on multiple news sources for community-related fund-raising. Two radio stations, including the 50,000-watt Atlanta Radio Korea, and four daily newspapers reach a majority of the community, said Jay Eun, president of the Korean American Association of Greater Atlanta.

Two years ago, after flooding caused dozens of deaths and left thousands homeless across the Korean peninsula, Eun's group sought the help of radio stations and newspapers to spread the word about fundraising efforts.

Atlanta's Filipino community, which Filipino-American Association of Greater Atlanta president Willy Blanco estimated to be greater than 35,000, relies heavily on e-mail lists the association has compiled.

They used the e-mail lists to raise money for victims of the 2004 tsunami that devastated Thailand.

The Lost Boys of Sudan, a group of orphans who fled civil war in their homeland almost 20 years ago, tend to organize along tribal lines. A group at Corpus Christi Catholic Church in Stone Mountain hails from the Rumbek region of Sudan. They are raising money to build a children's center in their home village. Another group is raising money for water wells for their Panaruu community.

That model of relief is partly because Sudan is so war torn and villages so isolated, that very focused efforts make the most sense, said Gini Eagan, pastoral associate at Corpus Christi.

Mexican immigrants have organized 14 hometown associations in which residents from the same rancho send money back for projects such as schools and clinics. The Mexican community in Atlanta, estimated as high as 500,000, tends to rally to appeals from Spanish-language radio stations, said Armando Bello, spokesman for the Mexican Consulate in Atlanta.

Relief agency efforts

Institutional relief agencies are already on the ground to help. At the time of the cyclone, CARE, the Atlanta-based international humanitarian agency, had 500 staffers in Myanmar involved in water, sanitation, food security and HIV/AIDS projects. Since the disaster, "it's almost all hands on deck to respond," said Lurma Rackley, CARE spokeswoman.

Baptist Global Response, a Southern Baptist relief organization, has a team of volunteers in Thailand waiting to go into Myanmar and plans to send a group to China.

While the American Jewish Committee has not sent relief workers to China, the group's international aid arm has sent a small group to Myanmar to help identify remains of cyclone victims, said Judy Marx, executive director of the Atlanta chapter of AJC.

"Israelis, sadly, are experts at DNA investigations and forensics investigations," Marx said.

Catholic Relief Services' international arm is working with local partners in Myanmar to help about 40,000 people with food, water, shelter and medical care, said Cullen Larson, Atlanta southeast region program officer of CRS, which operates in about 100 countries.

"We have immediate insight into situations, and the ability to respond because people are there."

Catholic Relief Services raised $195 million in aid for the 2004 tsunami, Larson said. The Chinese government hasn't asked the agency for earthquake help, he said.

Cang Li, of the Atlanta Sichuan-Chongqing Association, says the new Atlanta relief group plans Monday to wire proceeds from fund raising to the Chinese Red Cross.

"We want to do this as quickly as possible because right now the people really need help."

In Alpharetta, Colburn wants to organize a fund raiser at Lake Windward Elementary, where her second-grader attends. "It doesn't matter how much money, it's just the thought that counts from the child's point of view," she said.

Colburn's parents, live with her, but had gone home to China in April for a visit. She has been in contact with them and they are safe.

Her kids ask for frequent earthquake updates, she said.

Everyday they come home and ask, "Were you able to talk to grandma?"

Staff writer George Chidi contributed to this article.