According to southern Australia’s Metropolitan Fire Service, it received a “Triple Zero” emergency call on Sunday. (That’s Australia’s equivalent to 911.)
(Credit: MFS)

The person who called said that two girls, ages 10 and 12, were trapped in a drain in Adelaide. The girls had a mobile phone with them, but opted to ask for help through their Facebook profiles, rather than dial Triple Zero.

“It is understood that friends of the girls were alerted to their predicament via a social networking website, which had been updated from a mobile telephone the girls had with them while in the drain,” the MFS said in an e-mail. “It is believed the girls had been in the drain for quite some time. The sun had already set and conditions were dark.”

H/T cnet.com

Grant Brissey covered everything from hard news and technology, to music, film, and visual arts during his time working for The Stranger. Grant's work has also appeared at Geekwire, and in Billboard,...

11 replies on “What’s on your mind?”

  2. yo that way you can post pics and vids while calling for help. does 911 do *that* huh?

    plus facebook doesnt call the law on you for posting updates about the local bk not respecting your wishes for timely food.

  3. Just a half-hour ago I finished watching “The Host”, a Korean monster pic about kids trapped in a sewer who are located by their cell signals. Last night I saw “The Departed”, about cops & criminals playing cell-phone tag around Boston. Cell phones–they’re EVERYWHERE!!

  5. Doesn’t fæcesbook have a minimum age requirement of 13? Maybe it is because 10 and 12 year olds would be dumb enough to use a web page instead of the emergency number?

  7. To understand this, you have to try to think like a teenage girl- I’d be willing to bet they were trying to avoid the embarrassment of calling 911 (and their parents being notified) by contacting friends and hoping they could get them out. Obviously this plan was not well thought out (again, we’re talking about teenage girls here) and the plan backfired severely, in that it made international news instead.

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