A skier owes his life to the SOS emergency message on his iPhone. In this article you can read everything about the incident and how to activate this function in the event of an emergency.
SOS emergency message shows location of fallen skier
A skier in Zermatt, Switzerland, owes his life to a feature on his iPhone. After he single-handedly descended a glacier, he ended up in a fissure five meters below the ice. This one was snowed under and therefore quite invisible. Without the SOS emergency notification function on his iPhone, he would not have been able to retell this cinematic story.
Because the skier was several feet under the snow, he couldn’t move much. Fortunately, he was able to take his iPhone, which had only 3 percent battery left, out of his pocket. He called the emergency services via the SOS emergency call.
At the same time as the call, the function sent a text message to rescuers about the location of the accident. This allowed rescuers to quickly find him, pull him out of the glacier gorge and take him to hospital. the skier thanked next to the emergency services Apple too because of this handy feature. Read here how you can activate this function in case of emergency!
This is how you send an SOS emergency message on your iPhone
Of course, we hope you never have to use this feature. If you do end up in a life-threatening situation, it is still useful to know this. Here’s how to activate the emergency SOS notification on your iPhone:
- Press the iPhone’s power button five times in a row;
- Swipe ‘SOS’ from left to right.
If you have never set up the function further, your iPhone will automatically call 112 (or the emergency number of the relevant country). If you do all this by accident, you can cancel the emergency call by tapping the red phone button. You can further configure the function by going to ‘Emergency notification’ in your Settings app. Here you will also find the Medical ID and Emergency Contacts.
Set up Medical ID and emergency contacts
It is also possible to turn on useful (health) functions with these settings on your iPhone. This can be found under the heading ‘Configure emergency contact’. For example, you can set your Medical ID, which contains important information for emergency services. With this function, your blood type, weight, height and possible allergies will appear on your iPhone’s lock screen when an SOS message is sent.
It is also possible to set emergency contacts. These are your loved ones who need to know when you have sent an SOS emergency message to emergency services with your iPhone. In addition to a message from the SOS notification, they also automatically see the location of the notification.
Do you want to know more about setting up these emergency functions? Then read our extensive tip article about setting up the iPhone emergency notification. It is also possible to achieve the same functionalities with your Apple Watch.