Friday, Mar 20, 2009 at 11:18
Dennis
Mate sorry, I tried to word my response without it looking as though you were wrong.
I just wanted to make it clear if anyone else read it, that when you press the 911 button it goes to the GEOS Alliance, and they have said to their customers that they will call Aussar (by phone) and pass the details. There is no automatic routing of your help message, nor is there any formal agreement. That was all.
Yes they will treat it the same as any Distress Message that is received. In this case it would be passed to the relevant State
Police for coordination as its a land job. That doesn't mean you wont get help or anything, as that is a controlled action. Its just that there are Aussar roles and State roles. Slight difference is that Aussar retains coordination of tracking down an EPIRB whether its on land or sea. That doesnt mean the search is any less effective and there is a lot of liason and sharing of resources between them.
Last year there at least one instance where a Spot alert was raised by kayaker off Tasmania. He did get saved in the end but the passing of details to the correct authority within Australia wasn't too flash. There was some followup to that and better contact numbers (phone numbers) were passed.
I'm not being critical or anything about Spot, I think its perfect for allowing people to track you and lets you send SMS's. Its not a bad backup plan if you get into trouble. Ive considered buying one just for the tracking function
Personally if I'm in Distress I would prefer an epirb. It has many advantages in a SAR scenario (but cant send sms's :) ) For a start if you are in bushland (or floating in the sea) in many cases it can be very hard to locate someone based purely on a GPS position. Whereas an EPIRB transmits so ground and air searchers can
home in on you.
I have a good understanding of aussar as that is where I worked and I'm going back online in the next few weeks (I just took a break to do some other stuff for a few months :) ) But right at the moment please don't take what I say as a "company response"
I think you calling and asking was a great thing, and what you posted was correct. As I said I just wanted to clarify (for future readers) that it isn't an automatic response and there are no formal agreements in place. The response though will be treated as per any other request received.
Pete
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