Man Uses Twitter to Save Unconscious Woman on Street

Wednesday, May 20th, 2009 at 5:10 am

An Atlanta city councilman has used Twitter to save the life of a woman who had a seizure on the street. Instead of calling 911 for medical assistance, Kwanza Hall sent out a twitter message because his phone battery was low and he didn’t want to be stuck on hold.

“Need a paramedic on corner of John Wesley Dobbs and Jackson st. Woman on the ground unconscious. Pls ReTweet,” was the message he sent out on the social networking Web site.

Within seconds, dozens of Hall’s Twitter followers sent out the message to their followers and several people called 911 to report the emergency. Paramedics arrived in time to rush the unconscious woman to Grady Memorial Hospital. Doctors said she had suffered a seizure.

Was this the right course of action? What if no one actually saw the tweet and called 9/11? That’s a risk but I guess it all worked out. Some people on the internet however had different opinions:

“What a a moron! By sending out a general plea for medical attention via Twitter he ultimately caused more people to dial 911 than needed. Which ties up the 911 system and costs someone else who’s in an emergency valuable time. Dialing 911 brings the Paramedics. Dispatch doesn’t have time to follow other forms of medium like Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, email, etc. How about invest in a better system and more people.”

“Using twitter did not help this woman one bit. It was the person who called who was the first to get through to 911 and dispatch the ambulance. The only thing this councilman did was send out a panic to numerous people online who then flooded 911.

Because of him, other people with real emergencies had to sit on hold.Why is the media proud of him? Hundreds of thousands of people are out of work and this idiot is on his blackberry using twitter all day long. If he thinks there is a problem with 911, he needs to find a solution instead of adding to the problem.”

Guess you can’t please everyone.