Councilman uses Twitter to assist woman

Could tweeting be the answer to Atlanta’s seemingly overwhelmed 911 center?

Atlanta City Councilman Kwanza Hall said it’s worth exploring. On Friday he used the social-media tool Twitter to obtain assistance for a woman who suffered a seizure at the intersection of John Wesley Dobbs Avenue and Jackson Street.

“I was on my way home and saw her just lying on the corner,” the District 2 councilman said. A few passers-by had stopped to offer aid, but Hall said they were having trouble getting through to the city’s 911 Center, a problem that has been the focus of recent articles in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Just last weekend a southwest Atlanta house was gutted by fire after callers to 911 were placed on hold for at least seven minutes.

Hall said his cellphone was nearly out of power and he feared losing the call while on hold. So he “tweeted” instead, hoping one of his 1,849 followers (or contacts) on Twitter would reach 911.

“Need a paramedic on corner of John Wesley Dobbs and Jackson st. Woman on the ground unconscious. Pls ReTweet,” he wrote at 6:48 p.m.

Hall said an ambulance arrived and transported the unidentified woman to Grady Memorial Hospital. Hall said the paramedics told him the woman suffered a seizure. There’s no word on her status.

Hall said Sunday night he planned to register @911Atl on Twitter, though the city’s emergency operators won’t be responding to “tweets” anytime soon. A phone call remains the only way to directly contact 911 in Atlanta. “Let’s see how we can embrace this new technology and maybe save some lives,” Hall said.

Communications behemoth AT&T relied on Twitter to update its customers in the San Francisco Bay area after a fiber cut last month left thousands of people without broadband, phone and wireless service for most of the day.