March 13, 2007
Tornado responders slowed by using cell phones
In the chaos after a tornado killed nine people in Enterprise, Alabama, emergency workers had trouble talking to one another because they tried to use their cell phones instead of the state's $18 million emergency communications upgrade, officials say, reports CNN.
"People were frustrated, but all they had to do was turn on their radios," state Homeland Security Director Jim Walker told The Associated Press in a recent interview.
Like most people, police and other rescue workers have gotten used to using cell phone technology, said Larry Walker, Coffee County deputy emergency management director. "Because of our reliance on it, if it goes down you're in a quandary," Larry Walker said.
He said emergency workers eventually switched from cell phones to radios and that system worked fine.
The problems in Enterprise show how dependent society has become on cell phones, said Rosanna Guadagno, a social psychology professor at the University of Alabama. "Humans tend to be creatures of habit and our habit these days is the cell phone. It's disabling when technology we have come to rely on is not available to us," Guadagno said."
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