Ten Vernon Search and Rescue (SAR) volunteers and a helicopter responded to an urgent call Friday, only to find the blissfully unaware subject sitting comfortably at home on the couch.
It turns out the call was sent out by an iPhone that appears to have been panicking while its battery was dying.
On Friday afternoon, the SAR team received an iPhone Satellite SOS message that read, “THERE IS A FIRE, SOMEONE IS ON FIRE.”
The GPS coordinates showed the subject to be near Pinnacles Lake — a two-hour drive from Vernon.
Six volunteers and a four-person helicopter winch team were dispatched to assist with what was thought to be someone requiring urgent medical care.
The command team back at the base tracked as the GPS coordinates updated, showing the subject as still being out in the mountains but on the move towards the trailhead.
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In the meantime, the RCMP called the SAR team to investigate a report of a “potential spam or scam.”
“Someone [was] apparently repeatedly leaving messages and claiming to be Search and Rescue,” the Vernon SAR Group Society said.
“Admittedly, our Search Managers have been called many things over the years, but ‘spammer and scammer’ are new ones for us.”
Apparently, no SOS had been sent at all.
“You can imagine the surprise of our subject, who was sitting comfortably on their couch back at home, when we informed them they were actually still on the top of the mountain and likely had burns to care for!” SAR said.
From what the team has pieced together, it looks as though the trouble started when the subject had been in the Pinnacle area earlier that day.
“While hiking back to their vehicle, their iPhone battery died and the phone turned itself off,” SAR said.
“And around that time, they were walking through an area that had been burned by a wildfire.”
The subject then drove home with the phone on the charger.
“With no other explanation to go with, we’re left scratching our heads as to whether it’s possible that Siri got a little overzealous in her final minutes, and with her final breath, managed to get a rather twisted message out?”
The moral of the story, SAR said, is that we can’t always trust technology — but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a valuable tool.
“The flip side is the proliferation of satellite technology has been a game-changer for improving our ability to respond swiftly and accurately to (generally) accurate locations of emergency, which more than makes up for the wee quirks here and there,” it said.
The society says it is relieved this story had a happy ending.
“It could have been so much worse!”
