Cell phones and SAR
Cell phones: the risks and benefits for SAR
The latest advertisements for cell phones promote photography and e-mail.
What they leave out is the potential for your cell phone to help save
your life. Cell phones are great to call a tow truck for breakdowns or
even to call and say you're late for a meeting. But what if you're lost
or trapped in the wilderness?
A Manitoba woman was recently stranded in the country after being lost
on the way to visit friends. Michelle Koshelanyk survived 16 hours in
rural Manitoba thanks to her full tank of gas, cell phone and its charger.
More than 50 volunteers and police officers began searching for Koshelanyk
after she used her cell phone to call for help before its battery died.
But she was unable to give an accurate idea of her location, and so the
search began.
Koshelanyk kept warm by running her engine, and after charging her cell
phone, made another call to the RCMP.
Unsure of where she was and surrounded by no visible landmarks or roads
in sight, Koshelanyk tried to describe the turns she had taken to arrive
at her location. Because she was so disoriented, her directions led to
a search that covered several hundred square kilometres.
After searching for hours, the RCMP contacted the Rogers-AT&T head
office to begin tracing the calls Koshelanyk placed to police. Once her
calls were traced, searchers were able to narrow the search radius to
10 km.
After 16 hours of being stranded in the barren wilderness, Koshelanyk
was spotted by an RCMP plane. She had been told to flash her car lights
to help searchers find her faster. She was also told to build a small
fire beside her car so she would be spotted more readily from the air.
Koshelanyk is grateful to all the citizens and police officers who searched
for her, and says she was lucky to have had her cell phone.
"My family and I want to express our heartfelt gratitude to all
of those people who helped rescue me. They saved my life."
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Cell phone ban
The use of hand-held cell phones
while driving was banned in Newfoundland and Labrador in December
2002. The penalty ranges from $45 to $180 plus the loss of four
demerit points.
On the other hand, nurses in rural and remote
areas of Manitoba will be given cell phones to replace pagers, as
a result of recommendations from a nursing task force in 2000.
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The pitfalls
On the other hand, having a cell phone does not guarantee you will be
rescued. Batteries run out, reception isn't good, and in low-lying areas
or rugged terrain, the phone cannot pick up a signal.
A cell phone is not a replacement for a Personal Locator Beacon (PLB).
Using a cell phone to call for help is more complicated than setting off
a PLB to send a distress signal. A person who is injured may not be able
to use a cell phone, wasting precious minutes when a search team could
already be alerted to a person in distress.
A beacon can direct searchers to where their help is needed, when a cell
phone user can't describe the location. If a person is disoriented and
not sure of where he or she is, searchers can be misdirected. Tracking
a cell phone call to identify the location can take some time. With a
beacon, the signal emitted helps pinpoint a more exact location quickly.
The National Search and Rescue Secretariat will be looking at the policy
and operational issues associated with the of cell phones for search and
rescue. For example, the routing of emergency calls directly to SAR responders
instead of fire, police or ambulance; an incapability for some SAR responders
to talk directly to cell phone users; procedures for accessing the geographical
location of a cell phone signal; and, the current approach to education
and public information regarding the limitations of cell phones as emergency
communications devices.
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