Filmmaker Dan Woolley Used iPhone to Survive in Haiti Rubble (VIDEO)

Dan Woolley is lucky to be alive.  He’s even luckier that he happened to have his iPhone with him when that massive earthquake struck Haiti last week.

The filmmaker was shooting a documentary film about poverty in Haiti when the earthquake struck. He might have died had he not used Pocket First Aid and CPR, an iPhone app that taught him to treat his wounds.

More here: Haiti Earthquake

After being trapped and crushed by a pile of rubble, Woolley sought shelter in an elevator shaft, where he followed instructions from his iPhone app to throw together (in true MacGuyver-like fashion) a tourniquet for his injured leg a bandage to keep his head from bleeding.

The handy application even instructed Woolley not to doze off if he thought he could possibly be going into shock.  He set his iPhone’s alarm to go off every 20 minutes.

Woolley was sure he was going to die, so he started writing notes to his wife, Christina, and to his two young boys.

“I always wanted to survive, but I knew that was something that I couldn’t control. So I decided if I had to go, I wanted to leave some last notes for them,” Woolley told TODAY’s Meredith Vieira via satellite hookup on Tuesday. Opening the book and fighting his emotions, he read an entry he addressed to his sons, Josh, 6, and Nathan, 3:

“I was in a big accident. Don’t be upset at God. He always provides for his children, even in hard times. I’m still praying that God will get me out, but He may not. But He will always take care of you.”

More than 60 hours later, he was found by a French rescue team.

Woolley had been working with Compassion International, a mission organization, in making a documentary about the impact of poverty on the Haitian people. He and his co-worker, David Hames, had just gotten back to the Hotel Montana in Port-au-Prince after a hectic day of filming.

“I just saw the walls rippling and just explosive sounds all around me,” Woolley said. “It all happened incredibly fast. David yelled out, ‘It’s an earthquake,’ and we both lunged and everything turned dark.”

So as it turns out, having an iPhone is not only trendy, it might just save your life.

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