Rescuers credit Apple crash alert for quick response on B.C. logging road with no cell service

Search and rescue crews on Vancouver Island are crediting an iPhone crash alert with helping them locate an ATV that rolled over on a logging road Wednesday night.

"It was super interesting," said Nick Rivers, president of Arrowsmith Search and Rescue, who is also one of the agency's search managers.

"The RCMP called us out saying that they had received word from Apple that an iPhone had been involved in a crash. They had a location for us, and that was all the information that they had."

Arrowsmith SAR got the call just after 8 p.m., Rivers said, adding that the location was off a logging road in Mosaic Forest Managment's Northwest Bay Division.

Crews tried to call the phone, but were unsuccessful. Rivers said there is no cell service in the area.

A rescue team set up at the entrance to the logging road and dispatched 4X4 vehicles with chains and a UTV with tracks to try to reach the crash location.

Mounties launched a drone with heat sensors, which flew over the area and found a heat source.

"It was, in fact, exactly at the co-ordinate that Apple said it was, so that was phenomenal," Rivers said.

He added that the two people who had crashed "were really surprised" to see search crews.

"They actually didn't know that the phone had done it," Rivers said. "The first sight they had was the drone coming overhead. They heard the drone flying over, and then not too shortly after that, we appeared out of the woodwork and they were very, very pleased to see us."

Neither person was seriously injured.

Rivers said this was the first Apple crash alert his team has been called to attend.

Mounties and other search and rescue teams have complained in recent years about the feature causing too many false alarms. They've urged people to turn the feature off when engaged in recreational activities like skiing, where a fall isn't typically an emergency. 

"There's definitely been some, you know, false alarms from skiers falling and mountain bikers and things like that who maybe didn't require emergency service," Rivers said. "However, in this instance, all the technology worked exactly as it should. All the stars aligned and it was perfect."

Apple's alert allowed crews to get to the precise location where the crash occurred within about two hours of it happening, according to Rivers.

Without the crash alert, he estimated, crews might not have even learned the pair was missing until the following day, and would have had to conduct a more exhaustive search.

"Without knowing a location, we would've had to be searching the entire Northwest Bay division, which would take weeks," he said. "It would be monumentally massive to try to search that whole area."

"I believe it saved lives," he added.