July 29, 2008

Before you Panic...

No doubt you felt the jolt around noon today. I read it was only 8 feet below the surface so no wonder it felt a million times bigger than 5.4 magnitude. Anyway, just thought I'd pass on some info for future reference, ya know, when the "big one" hits... or any disaster for that matter. I haven't been able to confirm this, but it makes logical sense. Many of us today after the big shake instantly turned to our cellies only to be disappointed that they didn't work. I heard that Verizon (not sure what other networks) goes "off line" for about 30 minutes following a disaster to keep lines open for 911 emergency calls since in disasters people tend to instantly jump on the phone and clog up the network which causes some calls, including emergency calls, to not get through . I would assume your cell should be able to dial 911 during that time, but no other numbers.

I think our first instinct when the phone doesn't ring out is to kinda panic and worry about that person being severely hurt and their phone is broken since it's not ringing, and all these wild ideas play out. When in reality, even if they were hurt and their phone got crushed and no longer worked, your call would still at least go straight to voicemail. So I guess, you might have reason to panic if all you get is voicemail. Ookay, I hope I didn't just cause you all to panic. You get my point.

1 comment:

Jessica Martiele said...

I hadn't even though about that with the cell phones. You rock.