According to a recent report out of Australia covered by Switched.com two young girls, ages 10 and 12 years old, used their FaceBook status updates to alert friends that they were stuck in an underground sewer in Adelaide, Australia. Their FaceBook friends did contact emergency services for them, and they were rescued, but the emergency services personnel who did the rescue were upset the two girls hadn’t called them directly.
Though those heroic firefighters did manage to rescue the girls, some of them are upset that the two didn’t call them directly, and opted to contact friends instead. While the author would certainly agree that calling emergency services is usually the best answer, it’s also noteworthy that the two young girls might’ve been smarter to have used the update system of FaceBook and Twitter.
Here in the US, and especially in the larger cities, our 911 system can get busy. Being put on hold with a dying cell phone battery could have resulted in tragedy for the two un-named Australian girls. Information shared via social networking sites like FaceBook can get information around faster since most people are contacting friends and family with a status update.
But what about other life-threatening situations, such as home invasion, for example? Do you want the burglar to overhear you whispering to the 911 operator? Would it be good if the criminal heard the 911 operator answering you? While such a scenario might realistically scare an invader off, it’s not a bet many of us would like our loved ones to make. A FaceBook status update could serve well under such circumstances.
With the technology of today, it seems that 911 emergency services should also be retro-fitted to handle emergency texts as well, but that’s simply not the case yet. Another option might be for local municipalities to establish FaceBook pages for their communities as well. Who wouldn’t want to be-friend a few firefighters and paramedics?
Some officials within our government have even gone as far as to suggest a web version of 911. Sending emergency messages to the appropriate municipalities are a simple matter of tracking IP addresses (technology we’ve had for decades) or tracking of the cell-phone delivered emergency text via enhanced 911 services (also had for years now). Social networking sites such as FaceBook, Twitter, and MySpace would gladly comply with such a system.
Until something of this nature can be put into place, and under the right emergency circumstances, using FaceBook to get the word out could be the right idea. It certainly turned out so for these two pre-teen Australian girls. Did it not?
Sources:
Read the original story here on Switched.com
Sarasota County Considers Update to Web-Based 911
