Twitter: the New Emergency Tool for Travelers

Tragic events unfolded yesterday as a group of British skiers became separated from two of their party in the Swiss resort of Verbier. The rescue operation took on a global perspective when members of the party–a group of U.K. technology entrepreneurs–used the microblogging site Twitter in trying to locate the missing skiers. Despite the concerted efforts of the online community and the mountain rescue teams, developments which were instantly relayed on Twitter, one of the skiers, co-founder of Dolphin Music Rob Williams, died in the incident.

The sad events have highlighted the ways in which online and mobile tools can be harnessed to help travelers in emergency situations. A Twitter update by one of the group, trying to find the mobile number of the second stranded skier, Dolphin Music co-founder Jason Tavaria, was re-tweeted across the site. In the following hours, a combination of GPS, Google Maps and signals returned from his iPhone may well have helped save his life–Tavaria was found alive by mountain rescue.

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