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Cell phones provide vital links
Legislator promotes 'in case of emergency' listing.

Jennifer M. Fitzenberger / Bee Capitol Bureau

Published 02/08/06 12:11:00

This article was originally published Sunday, Aug. 21, 2005.

Assembly Member Nicole Parra chats on her cell phone as she cruises south on Highway 99 in her black-and-silver Ford Explorer.

Parra, D-Hanford, drives a lot through her sprawling, mostly rural district, which covers Kings County and parts of Fresno, Tulare and Kern counties -- and she never is without her cell phone.

"My parents have no idea where I am at any given time," Parra says into a hands-free device linked to her phone. "If something happened to me, it would be several hours before they knew where I was."

Not anymore. Parra has plugged her father's number into her cell phone under the acronym ICE, which stands for "in case of emergency." If she gets into an accident, a paramedic or police officer could find ICE in her cell phone directory and call it to reach her father, former Kern County Supervisor Pete Parra.

She is encouraging others to take the same precaution.

Parra has introduced a resolution that asks the state Legislature to encourage the 22 million Californians who carry cell phones to plug ICE numbers into their cell phones.

And emergency personnel in Fresno this past month have joined the bandwagon by checking phones for ICE numbers.

Parra says it's a quick and easy way to prepare for an emergency -- it takes just a few seconds to load into a cell phone. The benefits, she says, could be enormous, maybe even save lives.

A Cambridge paramedic developed the ICE concept last year after struggling to get family-contact information from injured patients, according to the Web site of the paramedic's employer, East Anglian Ambulance.

The idea followed research by Vodafone, a British phone company, showing that more than 75% of people carry no details of who they would like telephoned following a serious accident, the site states.

ICE gained momentum after the London terrorist attacks. Messages about ICE have been popping up in e-mail inboxes, and it has become a topic of conversation among paramedics, police and firefighters in the Valley and throughout the United States.

Lynn Bennink, trauma program manager at University Medical Center in Fresno, said staffers in the emergency room began checking cell phones for ICE about a week ago. They have found a few phones with ICE numbers, she said.

Bennink said they have been able to match up names on drivers licenses with last names in cell phone directories. "It's really helped them identify people," she said.

In 2003, about 900,000 patients taken to an emergency room could not provide contact information because they were incapacitated, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.

Bennink said a committee on disaster preparation also has discussed ICE. She predicts the committee will talk more about it now that Parra has introduced her resolution.

Before ICE became popular, staffers at UMC didn't use cell phones to help identify patients or locate their relatives. If a cell phone was on a patient, it was put into a bag along with other belongings.

To identify a patient, the hospital staff looks through clothing and a wallet or purse for a drivers license or identification card. If none is found, staffers work with law enforcement to track down the person's identity and relatives.

Bennink thinks ICE could be helpful, especially when a family member is needed to make important medical decisions such as whether a loved one should have surgery or a blood transfusion.

"Anything that would help us identify someone quickly and get a family member notified as quick as possible is going to be helpful," Bennink said.

But hospital staffers would have to be careful to match the correct phone with the patient, she says. The contents of a car often are jostled in an accident.

"You certainly don't want to be calling someone and telling them about a family member until you've got the right person," she said.

Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer said that, on occasion, officers have looked through a victim's cell phone to locate a relative. But police usually track them down using a records system.

About a month ago, the department circulated a letter to officers informing them of the ICE concept.

"I think its a good idea," Dyer said. "It is certainly something that is not going to hurt anyone in any way."

E-mail messages have circulated that say ICE is a mobile phone virus that drains pay-as-you-go phones of their credits. The rumor, the East Anglian Ambulance site states, is not true.