Uh oh. At about 10pm pacific time, a 3-alarm fire (about 66 firefighters responding) was reported at Apple's Valley Green Six building on Apple's Cupertino campus. The site, which is just down the road from the Infinite Loop HQ, is said to be an R&D building by Apple personnel -- Apple has not confirmed this.

The fire seems to be under control with no reported injuries although it's too soon for any kind of damage estimates. As surreal as it sounds, The Mercury News reports that, "Some Apple employees stopped by to look at the scene and snap pictures on their iPhones." And fiddle, presumably. Hit the read link for a local news video report. [Via MercuryNews, thanks Jeff T.]

Here's a survival product combo we never thought of: an LED flashlight that talks you through the basic steps of CPR. The high-efficiency LED in an ultra-compact AAA battery-based design will talk you through an important emergency skill while the world crumbles around you. The whole flashlight measures 4-inches in length and sports push-button on/off and CPR read-off -- all for $35. Images of armageddon and self-taught nurses abound. [Source: Book of Joe]

The FCC has already given its stamp of approval on a system to modernize the US's ages-old emergency broadcast infrastructure, relying largely on voluntary participation by the nation's wireless carriers to help get the word out to their subscribers in the event of a crisis.

Left open, though, was the question of exactly who would be responsible for taking the reigns at the federal level, managing the system and overseeing alerts. After some initial concern that it didn't have the necessary legal authority to manage the system during non-emergencies, FEMA has finally taken the bull by the horns and thrown its hat in the ring to get the infrastructure in place.

The agency's first responsibility will be to develop and publish a protocol for the alerts -- something it hopes to have accomplished in the next one to two months -- with public availability of the production system coming in 12 to 18 months.

Shiny Shiny may have picked up on this wind-up LED lamp specifically for festival season, but here in the States we aren't lucky enough to have such a thing. Still, this lamp could come in pretty handy while camping or during a black out. The lamp will last 48 hours when fully wound on 'night light' or 'safety light' mode, or four hours in 'ambient' mode. Getting there shouldn't take too long either, as a full minute of winding will give you 30 minutes of light. For the truly lazy a 12v car adapter is available. This wind up lantern is available for £19.95 or about $39.

Then again you can always pick up one of these for $10 less. [Source: I Want One of Those via Shiny Shiny]

Late last year, we reported on news that an amazing 82 percent of Americans owned cell phones, with 250 million of the things in use. Now comes an Associated Press (AP) report that says that three out of 10 Americans either prefer their cell phone or rely on it exclusively.

The numbers come as part of a federal study -- by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), no less -- which also indicated that 16-percent of households have no traditional landline phone and rely exclusively on a mobile phone. Another 13-percent said they have both a landline and a cell phone, but rely almost exclusively on the their mobiles. Unsurprisingly, multi-family residences, with multiple renters living under one roof, were most likely to have no land lines, while nearly a third of all people under 30 rely exclusively on their coveted mobile phones.

The study was conducted, most likely, to help the CDC figure out better ways to help cell people in medical emergencies, since it's becoming increasingly difficult for 911 operators to know where mobile phone users are calling from.

The level of mobile-phone-first users is sure to keep rising in the coming years. Given the and if we were betting men we'd wager phones of the wired variety will be in a minority within the next few years. [Source: AP/AOL News]

These days, every cell phone sold through a U.S. carrier contains within it a locator that enables emergency services to find you should you dial 911. Even if you have an older phone that lacks this feature, your cell phone carrier can still determine your location relatively accurately based on which cell towers your handset is hitting. During an emergency, that knowledge is comforting, but what if you just want to get away for awhile? That's the question on many minds as it's been revealed that providers are sharing that location info with police sans warrant.

It seems that so long as police indicate there is some sort of "exigent circumstance," in other words the risk of physical harm, then cell providers will give up the location of any of their customers to the police without a warning. All they need is some sort of written statement of those exigent circumstances and that's it, whether they be a mother who can't find her kid or a husband whose wife never returned home from work. The situation is different if that customer is involved in a criminal investigation, however. In that case, the police do indeed need a warrant, even if those circumstances still apply.

So, what do you think? Should the police be able to determine your location without any sort of legal proceedings, possibly saving your life if you were ever stranded on the side of the road? Or, should they need a warrant, leaving you on your own to find your way home? [Source: seattlepi, via fark]

Three years ago Jay LeBoff got snowed in and lost power for four days. During that time, LeBoff was forced to rely on a cell phone as his only way of contacting the outside world for emergency purposes. But without power to recharge the phone, he would have been up a certain creek without a paddle if the battery gave out.

The experience, and a little bit of environmentally-friendly thinking, inspired LeBoff to design the NRG Dock, an emergency power source in three different styles, two of which are taking advantage of the renewed interest in solar power.

The NRG Dock Home comes in two separate parts, a large solar panel that charges a massive 12-volt battery capable of powering a laptop, and the NRG Dock itself, which has a variety of power adapters for phones, media players and other electronics, as well as a rechargeable flashlight.

The Apartment model has the same dock, but instead features a smaller, removable solar panel mounted on top. The Apartment model doesn't generate enough juice to power a laptop, though, and carries a smaller battery, but the lesser size means the solar panel can be mounted on a wider variety of surfaces, including the inside of the window.

The basic Designer dock has the same smaller battery as the Apartment model, but drops the solar panel in favor of a standard wall plug and functions purely as an emergency backup power source.

Currently the NRG Dock is in the prototype stage, but the company hopes to hit a target price of $800 for the Home model, $500 for the Apartment, and $350 for the Designer. The Home and Apartment models will also qualify for a 30 percent tax break from the federal government and may qualify for additional tax breaks in certain states.

Related links:

• Green Tech to be a Major Theme at Next Week's Gadget Show
• Five Percent of U.S. Electricity Wasted by "Vampire" Electronics
• Eco-Friendly Solar Powered Christmas Lights

Operators at the Black Hawk County Consolidated Communications Center in Iowa are starting to freak out, as a cell phone has been repeatedly calling in to the center's 911 emergency help line. Almost 400 times last week the phone called in, with no one on the other side. Attempts to call the phone back have been fruitless.

After some investigating they found that the phone number had been deactivated and is not currently associated with any cell phone carrier. Cell phones, even after being disconnected, can still place emergency calls, as required by law.

Investigators haven't thrown in the towel yet, but they are throwing up their hands. "We are pretty helpless," said Judy Flores, a supervisor at the center. We're just wondering if this is another mother passing off her old cell phone on her gadget-obsessed child.

From CNN

Related links:

• Cell Phones in Subways, Not for 911
• Cell Providers Face Fines for Not Living Up to 911 Requirements
• Toddler Dials 911 From Cell Phone 287 Times

This week's horrific bridge collapse in Minnesota demonstrated once again that our country's cellular networks -- relentlessly boasted about in TV ads -- are useless during times of emergency. As family members desperately tried to reach loved ones in the frantic aftermath of the structure's crumble, they found themselves unable to connect. The networks were so overloaded with calls, they simply choked. They did the same thing last month when a steam pipe exploded in New York City, which blanketed one Manhattan neighborhood in dirt and debris, and brought back with it flashbacks of 9/11 (another time the cellular networks failed us). It was the same song and dance during Hurricane Katrina.

These failures might have been OK ten years ago when cell phones were still something of a novelty to the average American. But in today's day and age, as we increasingly abandon traditional landlines in favor of mobile handsets, the dependability of these networks is crucial. Failure is unacceptable. Those ads featuring the nerdy "Can you hear me now?" guy are quite frankly insulting.

Sadly, there doesn't seem to be any official solution in the works. There's been no plea from FEMA or mandate from the FCC to the cell networks to have a contingency plan in place during emergencies. And if they're not obligated to spend money on improving their networks, do you think the cellular carriers would ever bother? Of course not.

The answer, it turns out, isn't so far-fetched. It would be relatively easy for providers to implement, and might even make them some money. In an article written in response to Hurricane Katrina a full eight months before the Minneapolis tragedy, scientist and author David Brin proposed an emergency system in which cell providers adopt peer-to-peer technology similar to that used by file-sharing programs on the Internet. Instead of phone calls being routed through cell towers, they bounce from phone to phone until they get where they need to go. Brin also suggests limiting this peer-to-peer system to text messaging in times of emergency. Voice calls eat up a lot of bandwidth and can easily overload a system, whereas text messaging uses packet switching, like the Internet, which breaks messages up into smaller, more manageable pieces before sending them. By circumventing overloaded cell towers and limiting communication to low-bandwidth text messaging, it is possible in times of tragedy for the cell networks to deliver on the promises of coverage and reliability that they make in their ad campaigns.

The peer-to-peer component of Brin's proposal would definitely benefit cell providers when there isn't a state of emergency. By routing voice calls from phone to phone to phone instead of through towers, it would be possible for networks to extend into the further reaches of those regions where cell coverage is still spotty or non-existent. That would certainly result in more customers, and it would definitely make it harder to snicker at the TV when AT&T promises more bars or boasts about fewer dropped calls.

For now, however, this is just an idea put out there for debate on the blogosphere. Until the government compels cellular providers to adopt this or a similar emergency backup system, we're stuck with the same infrastructure that has failed us time and time again. Fortunately, there are a couple of things you can do during the next emergency situation to help you better communicate with loved ones. The first is to try text messaging instead of calling. As we said, text messaging requires much less bandwidth than voice, and in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, was one of the only ways survivors found they could communicate. The other was push-to-talk. In the days following Katrina and the New Orleans levy breaches, Sprint Nextel users found that, though voice calling was down, they were still able to communicate via the push-to-talk walkie-talkie functions of their phones. This is because push-to-talk is not routed through cell towers, but is direct communication between two phones.

For more on the technical how-to behind Brin's proposed emergency system, read his full blog post.

Related Links:

• Cell Text Alerts to the Rescue
• SMS Tsunami Hoax in Indonesia