Facebook ain’t 911

Two girls lost in a stormwater drain in Adelaide, Australia, raised alert over Facebook rather than dialing 000 (the emergency telephone number in their country).

The 10- and 12-year-old girls updated a Facebook status to say they were lost in a drain on Honeypot Road at Hackham in Adelaide’s southern suburbs on Sunday night. Glenn Benham from the fire service says it was fortunate a young friend was online at the time and was able to call for help for them: “If they were able to access Facebook from their mobile phones, they could have called 000, so the point being they could have called us directly and we could have got there quicker than relying on someone being online and replying to them and eventually having to call us via 000 anyway.” (Source: ABC.net.au)

Unless you have some “always on” Facebook friends checking out your updates 24/7, don’t rely on a website to get you out of emergencies. On the other hand, the lesson could also be that police and fire departments should consider gaining a foothold in social media.