Yay Government!
I called 911 today. There was a major car fire on the beltway that appeared to have just broken out shortly before I came up on it. I was sure others had called it in, but I still felt like I needed to just in case everyone else assumed someone else had made the call.
6 attempts.
Call 1 – busy signal
Call 2 – busy signal
Call 3 – busy signal
Call 4 – busy signal
Call 5 – busy signal
Call 6 – A message asking me to hold because all agents are currently busy. I also have to wait for this message to be repeated in Spanish. Finally, a connection. Then 3 rings. A person asking me if it’s an emergency.
Let’s just say I’m glad it wasn’t and I saw the people from the burning car walking away from it. Seriously, if I had actually been having a life threatening emergency, what the hell would have happened?
It’s not like I was calling at 12:05 am on January 1 when the dumbasses in competition for the Darwin Awards try to ring in the new year. It was about 3:45 today.
Kinda makes me think of Oleg Volk’s work.
No obviously related posts.
Few years ago drove up on a domestic dispute, boyfriend had blocked girlfriends car and was making threats. Several people all calling 911. All but one got no answer, and that one was told “We’re pretty busy, it’ll be a while before someone can check on this”.
Just bloody wonderful.
Well, it could be worse. In California you would have had to listen to the recorded messages in many more languages. I spent over twenty minutes calling 911 in the SF Bay area a couple of years ago…all cell phone callers go to a Highway Patrol center several counties away, and are apparently treated as low priority calls.
I finally got a dispatcher (heavily accented) and asked to be relayed to the local police (I’d found a small (approx 2 year old) child wandering along a relatively deserted bicycle trail, with no adults anywhere to be found).
Another half hour later I finally managed to get a non-emergency number for the local police from AT&T, and they managed to get someone there in about five minutes. The call from the 911 system never was relayed to them.
Local police advice is to keep their non-emergency number programmed in your cell phone, as they are well aware of the problem with 911 dispatch from cell phones. But, that is a poor substitute, as that county had at least twenty local police jurisdictions.
It may work better elsewhere, but in California, it’s broke.
Bill’s right about the SF Bay Area, just two days ago a guy calling 911 about a house-fire was put on hold for 20-minutes… Fortunately other people responded faster and lives were saved but the house burnt-down. I have local cops on my phone, their non-emergency number actually got the fastest results. When I called about a burglar at our complex there were here within two minutes.
I suppose some enterprising individuals could set up their own fee-based emergency line. Their goal would be to route any emergency call to the actual nearest police station/emergency service. It could be a 1-900 number, but hopefully with somewhat less outrageous rates than those phone sex operators and telephone psychics.
It’s probably not as bad here as elsewhere but I’ve had intermittant problems with 911 here in the Tidewater area of Virginia.
After having called the local police non emergency number several times to report suspicious/illegal non-emergent activities, I realized that the non-emergency number is more reliable.
I haven’t had to make an emergency call since the last time I got three busy signals from 911 and then got put on hold for 10 minutes before actually getting through, but the next time I have an emergency, I’m calling the non-emergency number.
By the way, as far as cell phones being designated low priority, that needs to change pronto. Many people (myself included) are eschewing land line phones. Why pay the bill for a home phone PLUS two cell phones? I got rid of my land line over a year ago and don’t miss it one bit.
San Francisco Bay Area does route almost all cell-phone 911 calls to CHP-Vallejo, where there are usually 2-3 operators on duty, IIRC. They must take your call and then route it to your local emergency services agency or local CHP office.
I spent a couple of hours chasing down non-911 emergency numbers for just about all the agencies in the bay area. They’re on the web, mostly. Turns out that San Francisco actually is able to nab some of those cell phone 911 calls and send them to in-city operators.
But I now have about 25 Bay Area police/sheriff numbers stored in my Contacts. Getting anyone to answer, and thereafter respond, of course, are different issues.
I always use *77 or #77, I forget which so I almost always have to try both. Given a 50/50 chance I’ll get it wrong about 98% of the time.
The correct one usually leads directly to the local State Police and it’s usually picked up right away. It doesn’t work everywhere and some jurisdictions will list the local number on the highway as you enter the area. NJ is something like #2244 or some crap like that.
It does work on 95 in VA, I’ve used it a few times. 911 is a pain in the butt, #77/*77 is just a call to the cops.