Man Credits iPhone App For Quake Survival

Thursday, 21 January 2010 15:01 Written by Ragel Nel

Injured, in a state of shock and trapped underneath six storeys of rubble after the devastating Haiti earthquake, an American film producer turned to his iPhone and his digital SLR camera to help him survive.

When 39-year old Dan Woolley walked into the lobby of the Hotel Montana in Port-au-Prince last Tuesday afternoon, he had just wrapped up a day of shooting a documentary film about the island’s poverty-stricken children. Just seconds later, a 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck, razing the hotel building and trapping Woolley under tonnes of debris.

During the building’s collapse, Woolley, who is nearsighted, lost his glasses. “When things settled a little bit I tried to look around. I couldn’t see anything. It was complete darkness, but I feel God gave me some tools to help me survive.”

Those tools were his digital SLR camera, his iPhone, a notebook and a pen. He used the camera’s flash to illuminate his surroundings and to take stock of his injuries.

Then he resorted to the Pocket First Aid and CPR iPhone app to treat a laceration on his head and a compound leg fracture. “I was able to look up treatment of excessive bleeding and compound fracture, so I used my shirt to tie my leg and a sock on the back of my head and later used it for other things like to diagnose shock,” Woolley says.

Since the app warned against falling asleep when going into shock, Woolley set his phone’s alarm clock to go off every 20 minutes.

He didn’t know if he would make it out alive, so he used the notebook to write farewell letters to his wife and two young sons.

After being trapped for more than 60 hours, Woolley was finally rescued.

Wired.com noticed the following review of the first aid iPhone app. It was posted by one “Webguydan”, but it is not clear if Woolley is the reviewer. “Consulted this app, while trapped under Hotel Montana in Haiti earthquake, to treat excessive bleeding and shock. Helped me stay alive till I was rescued 64 hours later.”

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