Fade to Play

My mother was an early adopter. She was one of the first people to have a cell phone in Ontario. It was a bag phone that she kept in a Toronto Maple Leafs tote bag. Whenever she left the house, she would take it with her in case of emergency. Back in those days the cell phone was not thought of a communication tool, but more so as a emergency device for contacting 911 or CAA, if necessary. It was far too big to fit in a purse and it cost too much for casual calls. Thankfully, she didn’t have to use it for any emergency, but it was always good for her to have, just in case.

During the windstorm last week in Vancouver, alot of trees fell down in Stanley Park and a disconnected mobile phone was used to find a homeless man trapped for 6 days according to this Globe and Mail report.

Six days after a massive windstorm toppled thousands of trees in Stanley Park, a homeless man phoned police to say he was trapped and penned in by branches, limbs and tree trunks.

Four brief 911 calls were received Wednesday afternoon, but officers couldn’t believe what they were hearing, said Constable Howard Chow of the Vancouver Police Department.

In brief spurts, the caller gave his location near Pipeline Road before his cellphone battery ran out.

“He says, ‘I’m stranded’ and calls back later when he gets enough juice each time, and this happened four times,” Constable Chow said. Using tidbits of information based on landmarks the trapped man could see, the mounted squad searched the area and found him.

Relevance: No smart phone necessary. He didn’t use SMS. They didn’t triangulate with GPS, just simple location-based technology (verbal information about nearby landmarks) let to the man being found.

Very incredible.
Image by John Lehmann/The Globe and Mail