The what3words app has helped save two teenage girls who got lost in fog whilst on Roseberry Topping. The girls had become separated from friends and were unable to find their way in the fog.
North Yorkshire Police, the North East Ambulance Service and Cleveland Mountain Rescue Team were all called to the scene at about midnight, for the rescue which was carried out in the early hours of Thursday. The teenagers were tracked down after they downloaded the What3Words app.
The lifesaving app works by dividing the globe into 3m x 3m squares and gives each one a unique 3 word address. The peak of Roseberry Topping can be found at ///washed.limits.shallower, for example. The app is free to download for both iOS and Android, or by browser, and works offline making it ideal for use in areas with an unreliable data connection. The 3 word address format is also consistent anywhere in the world, and available in 37 languages.
In an emergency situation, identifying precisely where help is needed is critical – and this can be near impossible if you are in an area with no address or if that address isn’t good enough to describe exactly where you are. For example, postcodes can apply to areas over 1-mile square and in London alone, there are 14 Church Roads. If you didn’t know where you were you might turn to your phone to try and locate yourself via a pin on a map – but imagine trying to describe your pin to someone over a 999 call.
In these moments, emergency services are forced to waste precious time and resources just trying to locate the person in need of help. At best, this can be frustrating, and at worst waste crucial minutes that are the difference between life and death.
Today over 75% of UK Emergency Services including police, ambulance, air ambulance, fire & rescue, coastguards and the British Transport Police have rolled out what3words to respond to incidents more effectively. Using 3 word addresses gives callers a simple way to describe precisely where help is needed and allow these forces to get resources straight to the scene.
If someone becomes lost, they only need to download the free app on their mobile phone and it will provide them with three unique words – which, when passed on to the emergency services, will reveal where they are.
The girls lost on Roseberry Topping were assessed by a paramedic at the scene but no treatment was required. The images of the crew attached can be credited to Cleveland Mountain Rescue Team and the others to what3words
How to download
what3words is available to download as a free mobile app for both iOS and Android, which works entirely offline in multiple languages. Look for the red icon with three white slashes.
