Tracking mobile phones with triangulation has come in handy for locating stranded tourists after the tsunami in Sri Lanka.

Using “cell triangulation”, more than 600 people had been tracked with the use of mobile phones along the devastated areas. Thirty-six stranded British tourists were rescued early Tuesday thanks to a mobile phone with one of them. The Britons were picked up from the southern beach resort of Hikkaduwa where they were stranded after the tsunami lashed three-quarters of the island’s coastline, killing nearly 17,800 people.

Authorities say some 10,000 international roaming phones were working on Sri Lankan networks at the time of the tragedy. Nearly 6,000 roaming phones had gone dead since the disaster while 4,269 phones had been used to make at least one call after the tragedy.

“Whenever anyone used the phone, we could track where the person was and restrict our search to affected areas of the country,” said a government official. Instructions are sent to phone users to call a toll-free local number that will be answered by a call centre manned by some 100 people.

The mobile phone networks were knocked out after Sunday’s tragedy, but 90 per cent of the services were restored quickly by arranging mobile generators to power base stations.

A website www.travelsrilanka.com collects information on missing persons to try and locate them using the mobile phone network.

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Posted by Sam Churchill on Wednesday, December 29th, 2004 at 10:39 am.