My mom just sent me this forwarded email with a bit of advice I'd never heard before. Does anyone know if this is true? It feels like a hoax.
Paramedics will turn to a victim's cell phone for clues to that person's identity. You can make their job much easier with a simple idea that they are trying to get everyone to adopt: ICE.ICE stands for In Case of Emergency. If you add an entry in the contacts list in your cell phone under ICE, with the name and phone no. of the person that the emergency services should call on your behalf, you can save them a lot of time and have your loved ones contacted quickly.. It only takes a few moments of your time to do.
Paramedics know what ICE means and they look for it immediately. ICE
your cell phone NOW!Please pass this one along to folks that YOU care about...
According to Snopes the ICE strategy has some basis in fact, but they link to a Los Angeles Fire Department site that says other preparations are more important.
Contrary to several chain e-mail warnings, ICE is not something that Paramedics will rush to look for the instant they arrive at an emergency, and is certainly not required in order for LAFD Paramedics to provide quick, focused and compassionate emergency care.We tell people: Add ICE to your cell phone only after you've affixed similar information to (or near) the official photo identification you routinely carry in your wallet.
Why?
With so many types and brands of wireless phones, it can take precious minutes to learn how to access a phone's directory. Many wireless devices are also found to be locked, damaged or have discharged batteries following an incident, rendering ICE unusable.
Please do encourage your interested friends and colleagues to make an ICE entry in their cell phone, especially if it will give them peace of mind — but not at the expense of written emergency contact and medical information.
Subsequently people began to create hoaxes claiming that adding ICE numbers to your phone would trigger viruses, malicious text messages, or hidden cell phone charges. These are all obviously untrue.
