Calling for help

If someone is in distress

1. Call the emergency services. In France and across the EU: 112.
2. Say the person is using myJikita and that their position is being recorded.
3. Read out their last known position from the app, and say when it was captured.
4. If they carry a Jikita tag, say so, and give its serial number if you know it.

Keep the app open while you talk. Everything below is on the screen in front of you.

Emergency numbers

Where	Number
Anywhere in the EU	112
France	112 — or 15 (medical) / 18 (fire and rescue) if you prefer
Switzerland	112, or 1414 for air rescue (Rega)
Italy	112
Spain	112
Austria	112, or 140 for mountain rescue
Germany	112

112 works from any phone, on any network. An emergency call can be carried by a mast belonging to an operator you do not subscribe to — which is why a call sometimes gets out from a place where the app could not send a position.

What to have ready

Read it off the screen. Do not work from memory.

Who

• Name and age.
• What they were wearing, if you know.
• Their experience and whether they were alone.
• Anything medical that matters.

What they were doing

• The activity from their plan — hiking, ski touring, climbing.
• How many people in the party.

Where

• The place from their plan, in words.
• Their last known position — read the coordinates from the app.
• When that position was captured. This is the number that matters, and it is not the same as when you saw it. The app shows both.
• Whether they were on or off their planned route.

Since when

• The time of the last contact of any kind.
• Their expected return time.
• Whether they sent an SOS, and when.

Equipment

• Whether they carry a Jikita tag, and its serial number.
• Phone battery, if you have any idea.

Say that more data exists

This is the sentence people forget, and it is worth saying explicitly:

"They are using an app called myJikita. It has been recording their position all day, including a full track and a planned route. That information can be made available to you."

The operator may not know what myJikita is. It does not matter — what matters is that they know a detailed position history exists and can be obtained, rather than assuming the last position you read out is everything there is.

How that information reaches a rescue service is described in How rescue teams use your data, and the conditions under which it is released are in Who can see your position.

Do not wait to be sure

The most common and most costly mistake is hesitation — out of politeness, out of fear of looking foolish, out of not wanting to waste anybody's time.

Mountain rescue services say the same thing every season: call early. A call that is stood down after ten minutes costs almost nothing. A call made two hours later is made in the dark, in worse weather, with a casualty who has been cold for two more hours.

Call when:

• They sent an SOS. Do not deliberate.
• They are meaningfully overdue and unreachable.
• Their track shows something that makes no sense.
• You have tried to reach them, tried the other contacts, and you have a bad feeling.

After the call

• Stay reachable. The rescue service will call back, and may ask for positions as they arrive.
• Keep the app open. Late positions may land as their phone passes through coverage — a batch of them arriving is itself information.
• Tell the other contacts that you have called, so nobody calls twice and nobody assumes somebody else did.
• If they turn up safe, call the rescue service back immediately and stand the call down. This is not optional and it is not embarrassing — a team may already be moving.

If you are the one in trouble

1. Call 112 if you possibly can. A voice call gets through on far less signal than data.
2. If you cannot call, send SOS in the app. It goes to your contacts, and it is queued and sent automatically if you have no signal at that moment.
3. Send an SMS. Text messages need much less signal than an app does.
4. Stay where you are if it is safe to do so, and stay warm. A person who stays near their last known position is far easier to find.
5. Keep your tag on you. It is findable independently of your phone.
6. Save your battery. Screen off, and resist checking every two minutes.