InReach users... info for emergency contacts

[Claudia]

If you use InReach make sure your emergency contacts don’t ignore calls from Texas (and know your itinerary and whom to call in an emergency)!

Recent posts on South Coast Touring on FB point out that it took longer than necessary to activate SAR because InReach first tried to get in contact with the listed emergency contacts who ignored the call because it came from a Texas number (where the InReach center is located).

“We could've saved a huge amount of time by reaching out directly to our emergency contacts who knew who to call and had a map of our location. InReach also reached out to our emergency contacts but both ignored the call (from a center in Texas) thinking it was spam. If you're going to use a device like this make sure your contacts are ready for that call!”

There were no comments if this could be a problem with Spot but its possible.

[pep]

the listed emergency contacts who ignored the call because it came from a Texas number

That means also that I need to make sure that my emergency contact actually WANTS me to be rescued!!!

Joke apart, for sure teach your emergency contacts how to proceed (maybe leave a page with instructions, number and URLs
(updated user name and passwords if necessary) and what information to get from these links.

links like these:

https://share.findmespot.com/shared/fac ... VaeXKJrfLo
https://www.livetrack24.com/user/VA7EPT/tracks

They don't really mean much to a person has not seen them and knows what to do with this information.
Maybe this would be a good topic for a "Last Friday of the month" event.

[James604]

This is really important and critical info, thanks for sharing Claudia!

Pedro, good call on a Last Friday topic idea, we should include these details as part of an evening at the least.