Facebook introduces disaster help feature – the ‘Safety Check’

In time of disaster it gets really very important to know if your family and friends are safe and out of danger. Now with the newly introduced “safety check” on Facebook you can let your friends and family know that you are safe when a disaster strikes. Up on the activation of this tool, the Facebook determines if the user is in such a disaster struck area. If it is so, it sends a notification asking the user to respond about his/ her safety. If the user selects “I’m Safe” option, automatically a post is created telling that they are out of danger and it is shared on their news feed.

This tool also allows the friends of the user to mark him/ her as safe. The location of the user is determined by the Facebook based up on the cities that they have listed in their profile or city from where they were accessing the internet or their last location if they were on some trip or visit to a friend. If the determined location is wrong, user can state that they are not in the disaster struck area. In case your relative or friend is stuck in such a situation and if they have activated the tool and marked it safe, you can see any updates from them by clicking the notification.

This feature was created by Facebook engineers in Japan after the incident of tsunami and great earthquake in the year of 2011. A disaster message board was set up by them which was the first version of safety check tool. The aim was to make it easier for the affected people to communicate with their families and friends. The service was launched this Thursday by Mark Zuckerberg during his visit to Tokyo. He also said that the two catastrophic incidents were the inspiration behind the invention of this tool. The tool allows a two – way communication between you and your friends.

You can tell them you are safe and also check on them. If you happen to be in affected area, tapping on “I’m Safe” button sends a message to your loved ones right away. It also lets you check on a list of friends who might be in the affected area.

However, this is not the first time a web giant has launched such a service. Earlier Google had also started its “Person Finder” service as one of the “Crisis Response services”. It allows people to state any information about any survivors in case of a disaster.