To monitor conditions in disaster areas in real time, enhance real-time performance and reduce the error of search and rescue, the application of the Internet of Things technology in earthquake emergency search and rescue of trapped personnel was studied, and applied to the design of an earthquake emergency search and rescue system. The collected data were transmitted through the Internet to the data processing center server by a RFID reader, and then fed back to the monitoring and defense module of the information processing subsystem in the disaster area. If an abnormal situation occurred, the radio frequency module would be turned on to order the in-situ alarm device to respond to the emergency search and rescue signal. The optimal search and rescue route could be calculated with the ant colony algorithm, and the earthquake trapped personnel could be timely searched and rescued. The experimental results showed that the designed system can effectively search and rescue earthquake trapped personnel. The throughput of the system was as high as 90%, the average accuracy rate of search and rescue as high as 97.6%, and the average consuming time was only 0.88 h. The system showed high search and rescue accuracy and efficiency.