Apple launched its new Emergency SOS feature via satellite for iPhone 14 users in November, and we’ve already seen several stories of the feature being used in the real world. A new story out of Canada today offers another example of emergency satellite SOS helping to save the lives of two women who were left stranded in the wild after an incident on Google Maps…
iPhone 14’s emergency SOS via satellite saves the day
As reported by Times Colonist, the two women were returning home from a trip to Alberta when they got lost near McBride, a small town in British Columbia, Canada. On the way home, an accident ended up closing the main highway, so the women checked Google Maps for an alternate route.
Google Maps led them through a detour on a service road in Holmes Forrest. This service road had only been “partially plowed” following multiple snowstorms, which the women were unaware of when they entered the road.
They traveled about 20 kilometers down the road, according to search and rescue authorities, before hitting a “wall of snow”, indicating where the plow had stopped, and becoming stuck. Since they were so far down a service road in a forest, there was no cell service available. One of the women, however, had an iPhone 14 and was thinking of using the new Emergency SOS feature via satellite.
Using the iPhone 14, they were able to send a message and their location to an Apple call center. From there, Apple’s call center contacted the “Northern911” call center in Canada, which then activated a call to emergency service teams in British Columbia. This latest emergency services team received an “information packet”, including GPS coordinates.
Search and rescue dispatchers, including the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, British Columbia Search and Rescue Team and Robson Valley Search and Rescue Team, were able to locate the two women at the using GPS coordinates. They pulled the vehicle out of the snow and helped it turn around and head back to the highway.
“A Game Changer”
Dwight Yochim, a senior executive with British Columbia Search and Rescue, said he believed this was the “first use” of the new feature in British Columbia.
There is no cell service there but one had the new Apple phone that has SOS in it and turned on SOS and to my knowledge this is the first time SOS has been used in Colombia -British.
If they didn’t have that what would have happened is family or their work would have said “hey they didn’t show up” and so the search area would have been from where they were last seen where they’re supposed to be, and it could have been several hundred miles away.
“It’s the kind of thing that could potentially save their lives,” Yochim continued. “It’s a game changer. This technology has the potential to really help us save lives and reduce the time it takes to do so.
For context, Yochim estimates that his team performs around 1,700 to 1,800 searches per year. The Satellite Emergency SOS on the iPhone 14 can significantly reduce the number. “If we know exactly where the subject is, then all we have to do is go in and rescue him,” Yochim said.
You can learn more about using Satellite Emergency SOS on the iPhone 14 in our comprehensive guide.
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