According to Cupertino City Hall Web Specialist Nidhi Mathur this application is the first of its kind on the market.
“We found a few school districts which had [similar applications] but none of the other neighboring cities had ever done this before,” Mathur said. “We might be the first to ever do this.”
This application was created around the end of October. Mathur and others at the City Hall were inspired to create this application in hopes of making Cupertino more emergency-ready and that the citizens of Cupertino would download this application.
The application’s information is divided in to three sections: before, during and after the emergency. In total, there are 17 readiness videos, four checklists, and one map that pinpoints all the Area Resource Center locations that locate missing people, serve medical aid and offer hazard control in case of an emergency. It took three to four months to gather content, make the application and release it to the public.
Junior Reena Thomas, who was asked to download this application for this story, thought that the intentions of the application were commendable, the app itself was not necessarily applicable to her.
“I don’t think I would have downloaded this app on my own since I haven’t heard of it. If I had, I probably wouldn’t have downloaded it because I don’t usually download apps,” Thomas said. “I think [only] teachers will [really] benefit since they need to know this stuff to help other people.”
Junior Meghan Tran, who also downloaded the application for this story, on the other hand found this application to be pretty helpful.
“Since I attended a Cupertino emergency preparedness event last year, [I knew that Cupertino had a radio, and TV channel] but this app showed the actual place where you could find [specific links],” Tran said.
According to Mathur, approximately 350 residents have downloaded the application. In the future, she hopes that the application will expand to different platforms.
“We hope to make a similar app for other forms such as the Android or other open-ended ways so that others who don’t have an iPhone will still be able to use the application,” Mathur said.
