Lost in the woods
Back to SearchThe call came in at about 4 p.m. on December 28 to the Ottawa Police Service’s (OPS) 911 Communications Centre.
The woman on the phone indicated that she and her friends were lost in the woods in rural Ottawa and could not find their way out.
The day had started bright, crisp, and sunny at -4C, but temperatures were beginning to dip, and it was expected to reach -10C by the evening.
The OPS 911 agent knew she had to work quickly and launched the RapidSOS tool that provides accurate GPS coordinates of any caller, often down to a 9-metre radius. That, coupled with What3Words app introduced in 2022, has become an integral new technology to help police quickly locate missing persons.
“The greatest thing about it is that it gives us an almost exact location of where the person is calling from,” said 911 Performance Analyst Joelle Martin.
RapidSOS is an integrated app that comes standard with all iPhone devices, and the company plans to launch an android version coming later this spring. It can accurately pinpoint a person’s location based on cellphone tower data, often within a few metres.
For residents with android devices, you can download What3Words app, which will help police locate you during an emergency. Even if you do not have cellphone service, as long as you downloaded the app prior to the emergency call it does not require cellphone towers to help police locate you. This app also works on IOS phones.
In this case, the 911 agent was able to find an initial location for the woman using RapidSOS. She then texted her a link to What3Words website and the woman relayed that information back to the agent. This confirmed the location from RapidSOS and helped the agent direct officers to their location and get them safely out of the woods.
“The information was relayed to our frontline officers who were dispatched to the exact GPS coordinates to start their search thanks to the help of the app and our 911 agent,” said Martin. “It really was a team effort on this call, including help from our frontline partners.”