Australia's firefighters are apparently a bit worried about the future of emergency services, after rescuing two girls trapped in a storm drain who turned only to Facebook to ask for help.

Link:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10347498-2.html?tag=nl.e776

Well... At the tender age of 10 and 12 one should nonetheless be able to make the distinction between what's real (getting stuck in a drain) and what's fiction (a.k.a. Facebook).

Obviously the girls were intelligent enough to initate an effort through Facebook. Hopefully they've learned dialing an emergency call directly tends to work better if you have that option. It's probably easier to do than using Facebook anyway.

And one would think something like this could only happen in comedy series . http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EBfxjSFAxQ

Unless they couldn't get a signal good enough for voice, but could still text. Being trapped in a drain, I'm surprised they had any signal.

As far as I know, if you can't do vox, you can't do facebook.

I'm not sure which amazes more- that someone on facebook actually called, or that dispatch believed it. I wouldn't have. Please, someone, tell me they have a lot of "special learning challanges", I can't say how much my mind boggles at the idea of "don't call 911, but post it on facebook".

I have less sympanthy and pity than normal. Yes, they are little kids. But if their parents let them have a cell, then the parent's should have taught them the RIGHT way to get help.

y...a...w...n...

The girls didn't fall into the storm drain, they walked into the storm drain, exploring, and didn't have the brains to leave a trail of bread crumbs.

Leave them there until they call 000. Or just leave them there until the next storm washes them out.

If they only had their mandated gear for venturing in storm drains! *Snicker*

A teenager in the NYC area fell into an open manhole about a month ago. She was texting at the time. It was reported though that the maintenance crew opened the manhole, and then went back to the truck for safety stuff. I'm gathering they'll be doing it in the reverse order next time.

Facebook sounds like a success in this case.
I find it hard to argue against something that worked, no matter how unlikely of a solution it was.
The girls are not in the drain system anymore and there was no door to door search nor was anybody charged with anything as a result of them disappearing.


There was a case mentioned on here a while ago about some young man who dialed their equivalent of 911 there and he died because they ignored him.

Edit.
I don't think that facebook should be a first choice and it certainly should not have been the only choice.

Edit 2
Of course it goes without saying that they should not have gone into the storm drains to start with, but they are kids and there was a way for them to get in.

Texting uses smaller packets of data, and often works when voice does not. It's been suggested that you use texting when cell lines are overloaded after an emergency (i.e. 9/11) for this very reason, as the texts are more likely to reach the intended recipient. Also, text messages are stored on the recipient's phone, whereas most voicemails have to be accessed by calling into a voicemail box, which would be hard to do if 20 million people are trying to call their kids/parents etc. after a disaster for example.

So, for all we know the kids tried to call, but were unable to do so and used their noggins to text their facebook pages... regardless, it worked and that's all that matters.