SAN FRANCISCO: Tech giant Apple’s Emergency SOS via the iPhone’s satellite capabilities helped save two women stranded in British Columbia (BC), Canada.
On their way back to Alberta, Canada, the women found the highway closed to traffic after an accident and used Google Maps to find an alternative route before choosing Holmes Forest Service Road, AppleInsider reports. doing.
They eventually arrived at where the grader had stopped, but the road was only partially plowed.
“After that, it was basically a wall of snow. When they tried to climb over it, they got stuck,” explains Dwight Yochim, senior manager at BC Search and Rescue.
Yochim also said they were about 12 miles down the road, stuck in the snow without knowing where they were, and out of cell phone coverage.
“There is no cellular service there, but one of them happened to have a new Apple phone with SOS and had SOS enabled. As far as I know, no one in British Columbia used SOS. It’s the first time I’ve ever done that,” he said.
After the woman used this feature, the RCMP and Robson Valley Search and Rescue used the GPS location to develop a plan of operations to determine what happened and the logging road the woman may have taken. I came to the conclusion that
“They found them, pulled out the car, and turned it around on the way,” Yochim said.
“It’s the kind of thing that could potentially have
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saved their lives. Additionally, he said that without an emergency SOS, it might have taken the team more than a week to find the woman.
–IANS