Woman Stuck In Pool Turns To Facebook For Help

Social media came to the rescue of a 61-year-old woman in Epping, New Hampshire, Aug. 11, when she got stranded in her swimming pool after its step ladder broke.

Leslie Kahn turned to her community page on Facebook to seek help when she couldn't get out of the pool after her day's swimming, wmur.com reported. "Without something for my feet to get leverage on and without that upper body strength, it wasn't happening," Kahn, a cancer survivor, said.

There was nobody at her home, and none of her neighbors were within earshot. To make matters worse, even her mobile phone was inside the house. Soon the minutes turned into hours.

Fortunately for Kahn, her iPad was within reach on a pool chair.

"I got the trusty pool pole, dragged the leg of the chair, dragged it over, got the iPad, hooked up to Wi-Fi and asked my community for help," she said.

Kahn logged onto her community Facebook page, "Epping Squawks," and posted a message beginning with "911 and an exclamation point" to grab attention and seek instant help, local media reports said.

Kahn said she just wanted a helping hand to get the ladder fixed and not any police or fire help.

Within seven minutes of Kahn's post, the community people started writing to her and expressing concern and offering suggestions. Soon a woman from a few streets away turned up.

"I was really glad to see her friendly face, and I sent her inside for the toolbox," Kahn said. "And then the police came and then a neighbor came from up the street because he'd seen the police."

There have been similar past instances when social networking has helped people. Last month, Nicole Shimmin, from New Zealand, took to Facebook seeking help from the people of Ironbridge, England, to trace a lost pendant containing her son's ashes. She had gone to the area for a holiday, Shropshire Star reported. The pendant was traced after a local person read Shimmin's post and realized her boss had actually found it.

In another incident in 2009, the life of a skier was saved thanks to Twitter. On a ski trip in the Swiss Alps, Rob Williams and Jason Tavaria got separated from their group during a snowstorm. A member of their team took to Twitter to get the phone numbers for the missing snowboarders. Tavaria was contacted on his mobile phone, and he used Google Maps to send rescuers the details of his exact location. However, Williams had fallen down a 66-foot cliff and could not survive, according to Mother Nature Network, an environmental website.

Meanwhile, police are of the view that social media is not always meant for seeking emergency assistance. The West Virginia Police spokesman, Lt. Michael Baylous, discussed in July 2015 the side effects of social media being used as a platform for seeking emergency help from police.

He said the concept was becoming an "unintended, potentially dangerous side effect," the magazine Government Technology reported.

“We have a generation now that are becoming young adults that that’s how they communicate,” he said. “That’s all they’ve ever known is to communicate with text messages and emails and in messages. They weren’t raised in an environment where you had to actually pick up the phone and call somebody and talk to them or stop in a detachment and ask for help.”

He has written several posts from the state police's account, urging people to stop seeking urgent assistance through social media.