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Man Trapped in Haiti Earthquake Credits iPhone App for Survival

by Amar Toor on January 21, 2010 at 10:15 AM

Usually, the most we can expect an iPhone app to do is add a few drops of entertainment or convenience to our everyday lives. Few of us, though, could ever imagine the iPhone actually saving our lives -- the way it did for one lucky American.

On January 12th, shortly after returning to his Port-au-Prince hotel, filmmaker Dan Woolley found himself hopelessly trapped under a pile of rubble when last week's 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti. Nearsighted and without his glasses, Woolley cleverly used the light on his digital SLR camera to get his bearings, and snapped photos to find his way to an elevator shaft.

In the wreckage, he also opened a first-aid app on his iPhone to help him treat both a compound fracture in his leg and a gash on his head. The app instructed him in creating a makeshift bandage and tourniquet for his leg, and guided him in halting the river of blood that was streaming from his head. Since the app told him not to let himself fall asleep, he promptly set an alarm on the phone to go off every 20 minutes. No less than 65 hours later, a French rescue team arrived to shuttle him away to safety.


Woolley was in Haiti working for the Christian mission group Compassion International, and had been shooting a film about the island nation's abject poverty. As he tells MSNBC, he credits God with getting him through the disaster and helping him survive. All we know for sure, though, is that his iPhone and camera had more than a major hand in it. As much as we may love to gush over our goofy iPhone apps or mindlessly addictive games, a story like this makes us realize that in the ultimate of dire circumstances, smartphone technology can sometimes do much, much more. [From: MSNBC, via: CNET and Wired]

Tags: emergency, haiti, haitiearthquake, iphone, iphone app, IphoneApp

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