Wren Keller and Michael Todd, both long time members of the HEMS community have created TWITTER accounts that allow you to receive early mobile notification of any HEMS or Public Safety Aircraft that has been involved in a serious incident.
“We wanted to create a way that interested parties can receive mobile alerts about Public Safety Aircraft incidents” said Wren Keller. “Flight Web and the Concern Network do a great job of making notifications, but to our knowledge there was nothing out there that allowed for mobile alert notification”.
Michael Todd, who has owned and operated Arizona Public Safety News Network in Arizona for five year, and has worked as a PIO for over 15 felt Twitter was the way to go. “I’m a member of the National Information Officer’s Association” and many PIO’s have began to use TWITTER as a notification system to the media. Los Angeles Fire pioneered this idea and it’s worked out very nicely for them” Todd said.
The alerts have been broken into two categories. EMS and Police. Firefighting aircraft notifications will be made under the EMS category.
Those interested in subscribing to this free service should create a free TWITTER account at www.twitter.com. Once the account has been established, they should elect to follow one of the following (or all of the groups).
PSAircraftDown: This group will receive all public safety aircraft incident notifications
HEMSDown: This group will receive only HEMS aircraft incident notifications
ALEAircraftDown: This group will receive only airborne law enforcement notifications
“We are only going to make alerts on confirmed incidents” Todd said. “The nature of this notification requires a positive confirmation” Keller added.
If you are aware of incident and would like make notification please email psaircraftdown@gmail.com.
http://www.flightweb.com/article.php?story=20081006091152650