iPhone alert leads to successful Island rescue

Two people were rescued on Vancouver Island after their iPhone sent out an SOS alert when their vehicle slid off the road.

Nick Rivers, president and search manager with Arrowsmith Search and Rescue, says his team was called out just before 8 p.m. on Wednesday night by the RCMP.

They were tasked with investigating a crash that had reportedly occurred 10 kilometres into the backcountry, near the Northwest Bay logging road.

The iPhone alert that emergency crews received — which was sent unbeknownst to the rescue subjects — contained a location and the battery level of the device.

Rivers says by working with the RCMP, the search team was able to canvas the area with a thermal imaging drone, after attempts to contact the vehicle’s occupants failed due to a lack of cell service.

Luckily, the drone picked up a heat source at the location provided by the iPhone and the search team dispatched two four-by-four trucks and a side-by-side vehicle to rescue the two subjects.

Despite difficult conditions, Rivers says the rescue was a resounding success.

“Everything worked phenomenally. It was great technology that worked exactly as it should have,” Rivers said.

“There was no cell service in the area, with freezing temperatures, snow on the ground, and a long unachievable hike out; it was a wonderful outcome to a potentially very dangerous situation.”

Without the precise location provided by the iPhone, Rivers says the search would have commenced only once the subjects were reported missing, and it would have had to be done on a much larger scale.

Rivers adds the search and rescue team has encountered difficulties in the past using iPhone alerts to locate people in distress.

“One of the challenges that we run into when we recieve the iPhone crash alert is we don’t know how many people there is or what the situation is,” he said.

“It makes our coordinated search and rescue efforts quite challenging.”

False SOS alerts are also often sent via iPhones, he adds.

In this case, Rivers says the subjects of the rescue did everything right, including staying with their vehicle so they could be found at the location included in the iPhone alert.

“This was just an accident; the roads were really slippery and challenging,” he said.

“There’s lots of beautiful places to see in this country and in this case, the vehicle just slipped off the road, and they did the right thing by staying with the vehicle.”

Rivers cautions anyone else heading into the backcountry to make sure they’re carrying the ten essentials, have told someone where they’re going, and have some way of sending out an SOS signal, whether that’s via iPhone or satellite device.

“Do your best to plan for the unplannable,” he said.

With files from David Nadalini.