WhatsApp helps rescue seven hikers in Madrid
It seems that the most widespread instant messaging tool among Spanish users continues to find uses beyond its main objective: be in touch And, according to reports Europa Press, siete hikers who decided to spend New Year's Day in the Madrid mountains were able to be rescued quickly thanks to WhatsApp after getting lost.It is not surprising since this application contains various useful functions beyond communication, such as, in this case, the possibility ofshare the location of the user.
The event happened last Tuesday 1 January, when seven people of Asian origin decided to go on a trip to Peñalara, the highest mountain in the Sierra de Guadarrama When they found themselves out of place they decided to contactEmergency service from 112 to 21:00 This service diverted the call to the CenterFire Coordination Center of the Community of Madrid , where the GERA took control of the situation. This is the Special Height Rescue Group, in charge of carrying out rescue operations.
This group contacted the group of hikers by telephone, who were provided with a telephone number to add to their agenda .In this way, both the hikers and the GERA could get in touch via WhatsApp Thus, after sending the exact location of the lost group , it only took an hour to find and rescue the hikers. After that, the Red Cross was in charge of knowing the state of he alth of the group, of the that two of its members had mild hypothermia
The speed of reaction and the fact of using WhatsApp by the GERA is not a coincidence or an anecdote. And it is not the first time this has happened. This rescue group has been for several months actively operating with WhatsApp realizing that it is a very widespread tool and with very useful possibilities in the rescuing lost hikers Up to six times in the last two months have been able to use the send location function to quickly find these people.A function with a minimum margin of error that makes rescue operations easier and faster.
In fact, the group GERA from Madrid has already deployed an operation to inform hikers of how to use WhatsApp And it has been detected that the users of this tool are perfectly aware of its use in the field of communication , but they don't master how to combine the GPS technologyof their terminals with the function of sending the location to achieve the highest possible accuracy. Questions that are recommended to rehearse at home to master prior to an excursion
With this, rescue and salvage operations are much easier, since we have a margin of 10 or 15 meters Without Without a doubt, a great advance against the imperfect indications of a lost hiker, and without the need to acquire expensive GPS devicesOf course, it is necessary to have battery in our smartphone and a data rate to be able to share our location at no additional cost.
