Emergency location options and apps
Despite our best efforts of safety, being careful and looking out for each other, unfortunately on rare occasion, accidents and incidents do happen, when we are all out walking.
In an emergency, a very quick dynamic assessment will deduce if we need to call the emergency services, here on the island that will connect us to the emergency joint control room and one of the vital initial pieces of information they require is ‘ What’s your location?’
A number questions now confront us and the quicker we reply with this information, the quicker the correct emergency services can be dispatched.
Postcodes, road names, house numbers and a gird reference are all valid options, especially the latter, if the incident is in a remote location but new options of digital applications are now available and are used here on the island by our first response emergency teams.
What3Words (been heavy publicised recently) is a downloadable app for your mobile phone that divides the world into 3m x 3m squares and assigns each square 3 words. As opposed to GPS coordinates, the 3 words are meant to be more human-friendly and easy to remember, more and more people and business are using it in there everyday directional location services, it’s here to stay. Once downloaded on your mobile telephone you simply open the application and press a button and 3 words will appear, these are unique and can guide the emergency services to your precise location (remember, if you have gone to another location to make the call, the location of the patient/s will be different).
For more information on What3Words click here http://what3words.com
Other location apps available include:
• OS Locate -Which gives you a map 6 figure map reference of your location
• GPS OS – Which will give a 10 figure map reference of your location
Other location finding apps are available and it may be a good ideas to do some research or download the app that works best for you.
Please use your preferred supplier and all these Apps are free to download BUT please always remember that if your phone falls in a puddle or runs out of battery then it WON’T work, so always make sure you have the ability amongst the group to take a grid reference from a map!