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Will Cal get with the program? cell phones for emergencies
By WDavidStephenson | May 24, 2007
My posts will be quite limited for the next few days while my family struggles with my mother’s illness. However, Swan Island’s Pete O’Dell sent along this from the Christian Science Monitor about how California Lt. Gov. John Garamendi (D) wants the state to use cell phones as a major means of distributing emergency information.
Welcome to the 21st century.
The story quotes my friend Art Botterell, Mr. Emergency Communications:
‘Cell broadcast has been around for at least 10 years, but there’s never really been a business driver for it. And so the cellphone companies haven’t implemented that technology,’ says Art Botterell, a warning-systems expert. ‘It’s something that they could do, but it’s not quite turning on a switch. It does involve spending some money.’
The article also cites friend Joe Walsh at Square Loop, which has solved the problem of making sure that those to whom the emergency messages apply get them, while those who are outside of the area don’t, and vibrates so the deaf get the message.
As I told Wired during the VA Tech crisis, “… in a disaster, we will use whatever tools are at hand to communicate,” so why not use the communications technology — cellphones — that we all use every day (and, in case you missed the recent news, cell phones are the phones for many now [12.8% of households only have cell phones now] , especially the young, poor, and minorities, so if you want to reach them in an emergency, cell is the only way to go.
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