Eideard

Chilean rescuers have saved two tourists who got into trouble on an Andean mountain and raised the alarm by calling an emergency number in the US.

The two – an Italian and a Czech – used a satellite device to send their location to a rescue centre in Texas.

Local teams then had to contend with heavy snow, rain and high winds to reach the pair, who were sheltering on the slopes of the Quetrupillan volcano.

After the rescue, the tourists said they were lucky to be alive. “It was very serious. At times we thought that we were going to die,” said Czech Phillip Kunk. Italian Analissa Lombardo said it was the most frightening experience of her life.

The two were taken a local hospital to be treated for symptoms of hypothermia…

They entered the national park on Monday, planning to walk along a trail that usually takes five days. But they got into trouble by the early hours of Friday, and raised the alarm with Texas rescuers.

The Americans then alerted the Chilean authorities, and a rescue team was despatched to the area, near the resort town of Pucon.

This is one of those terrific solutions that finally becomes affordable. The usual satellite phone costs way too much for most adventure trekkers; but, a few firms now maintain a communications service for small, portable – affordable – phones that are only good for [a] sending an emergency alert and [b] identifying where you are.

No long conversations with the family dog; but – as in this case – the folks providing the service contact the authorities where you are cramped and send help.

A 30-man armed SWAT team stormed a school in Illinois after a staff member accidentally called his wife from his pocket, causing her to believe that he was being held hostage.

Officers in America wearing riot gear and carrying automatic weapons searched Carlton Washburne School, Winnetka, for almost three hours after the woman, who has not been identified, called 911.

Joseph De Lopez, the local police chief, said the woman reported receiving a call from her husband in which she could hear muffled voices and believed he was being held captive by a man with a gun.

Within minutes a security perimeter was established around the school, whose pupils had left for the day, and officers poured into the building. Three TV news helicopters were circling above.

But while they were still searching the school, and the man’s distressed wife remained connected to his mobile phone and to 911, he returned home.

While driving back from work, he had called his wife by sitting on his mobile phone, which was in his back pocket, while he listened to hip-hop and talked to himself.

“His wife was the last number he’d dialled,” Chief De Lopez said.

Mark Friedman, the school district interim co-superintendent, explained that the music’s “gangster-like” lyrics had contributed to the woman’s concerns.

This passes for “good, clean fun” in the United States of America.

“What’s that behind us?”

A United Airlines flight from Chicago to Germany was diverted to Toronto’s Pearson Airport late Monday night after the pilot spilled a coffee, Transport Canada reports.

The coffee interfered with the plane’s navigation and communication system and sent out distress signals including code 7500 — unlawful interference, or a hijacking — and code 7600, which means the plane has lost communications.

“With the help of their company dispatch staff, the flight crew was confirmed the problem to be a NAV(navigation)/communication issue and not a valid code 7500. The flight crew initially diverted to return to Chicago but subsequently declared an emergency … and diverted to Toronto…”

A United spokesman told CNN a review is underway and it was too soon to comment on what happened.

Everyone’s just happy that Homeland Insecurity didn’t order them to be shot down.

Texting – old school

In a bid to bring the life-saving emergency service 911 into the 21st century, the FCC is looking at letting citizens report crimes through text messages and even stream video from their mobile phones to emergency centers.

Established as a national standard in 1968, 911 handles more than 230 million calls a year — 70 percent of which now come from mobile phones.

The last real overhaul of 911 by the FCC came in 2001, when mobile carriers were required to allow 911 to identify the location of callers either through GPS or cell-tower data…

But the 911 system still can’t handle text messages, multimedia messages or streaming video, all of which could be very helpful to first responders.

A system that could handle those messages would also allow people to report crimes without being overheard, which could be useful in situations ranging from kidnapping to seeing someone being robbed on the street…

It’s not clear yet where the money will come from for the upgrades, whether they will be federal requirements states and cities must carry out or if they will simply be suggestions.

Perish the thought our politicians adopt useful, constructive protocols like this without giving every local hack a chance to get in on an opportunity to be “lobbied” by equipment vendors.

Push comes to shove, the Federalist rationale supports small-time graft as well as it does the Congressional flavors.

Four students who were kidnapped in a Sunday night carjacking in Atlanta used a cell phone to call 911 from the trunk of the car where they were being held, only to be put on hold by 911…

The captives eventually called the Morehouse College police department, where a dispatcher alerted officers to their whereabouts, the students said at a news conference at Morehouse on Monday morning.

Two suspects, a 17-year-old and a juvenile, were arrested when police arrived at a West End bank where the suspects went to use the victims’ ATM cards…

Worthy said that after being kidnapped, one of the students in the trunk “got on his phone and dialed 911. He was unable to get anyone, he was put on hold at 911, so he switched over and called the Morehouse College police number.”

Morehouse police dispatcher Karen Wells answered the call, and directed officers from Morehouse and other Atlanta University Center campuses to the Wachovia Bank in West End, where police found the victims and arrested two of the suspects…

On the chilling dispatch tape released by Morehouse police Monday morning, the student is heard pleading with Wells, “please hurry, they said they are going to kill us.”

Ain’t cost-savings wonderful?

Some beancounter or other figured they could save bureaucrats a buck or two by removing human beings from the response time equation. And damned near got these kids killed.

There wasn’t any such thing as flu vaccine in 1918

President Barack Obama declared the swine flu outbreak a national emergency, giving his health chief the power to let hospitals move emergency rooms offsite to speed treatment and protect noninfected patients…

Health authorities say more than 1,000 people in the United States, including almost 100 children, have died from the strain of flu known as H1N1, and 46 states have widespread flu activity. So far only 11 million doses have gone out to health departments, doctor’s offices and other providers, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials…

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius now has authority to bypass federal rules when opening alternative care sites, such as offsite hospital centers at schools or community centers if hospitals seek permission…

The national emergency declaration was the second of two steps needed to give Sebelius extraordinary powers during a crisis.

On April 26, the administration declared swine flu a public health emergency, allowing the shipment of roughly 12 million doses of flu-fighting medications from a federal stockpile to states in case they eventually needed them. At the time, there were 20 confirmed cases in the U.S. of people recovering easily. There was no vaccine against swine flu, but the CDC had taken the initial step necessary for producing one.

”As a nation, we have prepared at all levels of government, and as individuals and communities, taking unprecedented steps to counter the emerging pandemic,” Obama wrote in Saturday’s declaration.

The most contemptible political contradictions in this process come from conservatives and libertarians who started out fear-mongering over vaccines and have now switched to finger-pointing, trying to blame the government for the inability of producers in the U.S. to come up with an adequate supply to match demand.

RTFA to understand how the regs mostly concern quarantine and treatment centers.

Carmen Blake and baby Mariah — physiotherapist Helen Ivers who delivered Mariah

Mother-of-three Carmen Blake called her midwife to ask for an ambulance when she went into labour unexpectedly with her fourth child…

She said: “I phoned up the Royal Infirmary, it’s just across the road, and they said to go into a hot bath, and then to make my way over there.

“I went into the bath and realised she was going to come quickly. I didn’t think I’d be able to make it out of the bath, so I phoned the maternity ward back and told them to get an ambulance out.

‘They said they were not sending an ambulance and told me I had had nine months to sort out a lift…’

Eventually Ms Blake and her friends enlisted the help of a physiotherapist who happened to be passing on her way to work.

She dialled 999 and helped deliver baby Mariah while waiting for emergency services…

Today a spokeswoman for the University Hospitals of Leicester said: ‘We are disappointed that Ms Blake was not happy with the advice and care she received and will of course investigate any complaint.

Was that an actual human being who delivered the statement from the Royal Infirmary?

Sounds like same kind of robot bureaucrat that makes decisions like this.

Yes, this also is the truckstop voted to have the best restrooms

You may not have the answer for how to thrive in a lousy economy. I may not have the answer for how to thrive in a lousy economy. But the truck stop dentist figured it out a long time ago.

“When your dental practice is in a truck stop, you don’t have a lot of patients coming in for their six-month cleanings,” said Dr. Thomas P. Roemer. “You have people walking in holding their jaws in pain. Treatment is not optional — they need to see a dentist, and they need to see me now.”

Dr. Roemer’s one-man dental office is inside the Iowa 80 Truckstop, at Exit 284 of Interstate 80, near the small town of Walcott. The complex proclaims itself to be the world’s largest truck stop, and if you’ve never been there — well, the truck stop itself is probably a story for another time. Suffice it to say that the establishment is spread over 200 acres, that it features its own movie theater, a 300-seat restaurant with a 50-foot salad bar, the Super Truck Showroom (more than 75,000 truck-related items for sale, festooned with enough gleaming chrome to make you reach for your sunglasses).

These desperate economic times highlight the importance of individual inventiveness and ingenuity — and a dentist has to be beyond ingenious to gaze upon an Iowa truck stop and figure out: A fellow could make himself a pretty nice living in there.

RTFA. Fun – and we all might learn a thing or two about being an entreprenuer.

Daylife/AP Photo by Mel Evans

Like callers dialing 911 and getting no answer, boaters could end up stranded — or worse — if they haven’t upgraded their emergency distress beacons by this weekend. But the improved technology will speed rescues and spare agencies from many false alarms.

Beginning Sunday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will stop using its satellites to monitor the 121.5 MHz frequency used by older analog boater distress beacons. NOAA and the U.S. Coast Guard, which responds to maritime distress calls, will instead limit their watch to newer digital signals coming across the 406 MHz frequency.

The signals come from devices known as Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacons, or EPIRBs (pronounced EE’-purbs). Signals to NOAA satellites from such devices have been used to rescue more than 11,000 people since the program began in 1982.

For recreational boaters, EPIRBs are not mandatory equipment like life vests, but they are considered a good idea for anyone boating alone or beyond the sight of land. They are required in commercial vessels operating more than three nautical miles offshore.

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The plane being lifted from the water to a waiting barge
Daylife/AP Photo by Craig Ruttle

The pilot of the US Airways Airbus that was forced to crash-land in New York’s Hudson river after both its engines failed has told investigators he made a split-second decision to attempt a water landing to avoid a possibly “catastrophic” crash in Manhattan.

Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger’s account of the landing was released as salvage crews hoisted US Airways Flight 1549 from the river and on to a barge. Investigators retrieved the plane’s black boxes, which were filled with fresh water, and sent them to Washington for analysis.

The aircraft’s torn and shredded underbelly revealed the force with which it hit the water. A gash extended from the base of the plane toward the windows, its right wing appeared charred and the exterior of the destroyed right engine apparently had been peeled off…

The pilot told investigators yesterday that in the few minutes he had to decide where to set down the plane on Thursday afternoon, he felt it was “too low, too slow” and near too many buildings to go anywhere other than the river, according to an account of his testimony to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).

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