Safety Tip: 911 Backup

I dialed 911 on monday at a real-life emergency and received the following crystal clear message:

"The number you have dialed has been disconnected."

The 911 "emergency mode" menu was on the phone (Verizon Wireless), and all. I had crystal clear service, and even could have ordered pizza if I wanted, but couldn't get emergency help in the manner I expected. I was able to call from right there ten minutes later to get a ride home, after all.

Important safety tip: Have the highway patrol (or equivalent) direct emergency number stored on your phone. If 911 doesn't work (as it failed for me), you have a next step ready to go. It's distracting when (for some inexplicable and absurd reason), your call for help doesn't work, and that's the last thing you want in a real emergency. To be distracted from things that need doing.

As it turns out (back to the drama), an off-duty CHP guy got the call through to local people already, and the ambulance pulled up while I was staring at my phone like an idiot; the CHP guy was parked just out of view past the brightly burning car at a safe distance minding his own family (the driver of the flaming car was the only one involved, and very, very dead (and on fire), brush and forest catching fire, car was still making "bang" sounds, and I had eyes only for the telephone and the nearby stinking fire at that moment).

Apparently, avoiding driving 90 MPH on a mountain road in the dark (perhaps while intoxicated) is a good idea, too. That's what Mr. Crispy Critter On-Fire Dead Guy was allegedly doing before I got there.

The next day I called Verizon. They blamed the local police. I called the sherrif. They gave me the number for CHP, who takes the cellular calls. I called them, and they directed me to the local CHP substation, and got a machine, because they don't expect to take emergency calls right there - it's just an office, not the dispatch. I got the royal bureaucratic run-around, and all I really wanted was to make sure the problem got fixed.

So far, since then, I've called Verizon again and managed to get through to a second tier of customer support (who took down some information and never called back). I've written a registered letter letting Verizon know that I'm making it their problem, and that I'd be happy to testify against them if someone gets around to suing them over a preventable death, since they will have been notified of the problem and done NOTHING about it. Negligent homicide, is my take. I told them I hoped they would at least come up with the appropriate paper trail for their own protection. I also filed a complaint with the FCC, who takes these complaints.

It's illegal to call 911 "just testing", so you can't legally find out if their service works at any given location. So have some local and state emergency numbers ready as backup. There's also 411, I suppose, or calling someone and having them play "emergency relay" for you. None of these options were occurring to me, as I was frankly frozen in some mode of indecision and incredulity over the silliness of the message I received, with the crackle and popping of the car and body nearby. When the ambulance showed up, maybe a minute later, I was still staring at the phone. I was pretty much in "Yessir" mode at that point. Do whatever they tell me. Help poke around in the bushes for bodies thrown out of the vehicle. Offer up my perfectly good fire extinguisher that sat in my truck while I stared at the phone. Feel like a useless moron.

[schplurg]

You should always have your local fire and police numbers programmed into your cell phone. With most services, dialing 911 only connects you to their own answering service (say AT&T for example) where you can report the incident, then your request is forwarded to proper local authorities from that point. In other words, they don't have real 911 service.

That's been my experience, and everyone elses that I know who owns a cell. In fact this was explained in the manual that came with my phone when I purchased it. I made a call to the Sheriff a few nights ago, though it was non-emergency. I called my sister and got our local # instead of bothering with AT&T's "911" service.

Most people don't realize this until they try calling 911 themselves. Not a great system.

As a little web research revealed (while I was seeking additional contact points to notify), this is a well-known problem. Lots of cell phone coverage, but 911 doesn't work universally, and seemingly infinite extensions for wireless carriers to "fix it".

Don't assume just because you can call *anyone* else, that 911 will work when you need it.

[RichardR]

Wow! I have only had to call 911 once from my cell. That was about a year ago in the city of San Francisco, and I got through straight away. Thanks for the heads up.

Well, almost certainly the less urban the spot, the higher the likelihood you will be having this problem.

A hundred complaints a day in a city are hard to put up with. Someone will eventually fix it because of the nuissance. A complaint every month or so at a rural location is easy to ignore.

Of course, think about how often people are driving between cities, or going vacationing, such as around Bass Lake, which is a destination unto its self, though there are a LOT of campsites nearby.

Infrequent, but wherever you happen to be when there is an emergency is where you are. You don't get to choose "I'll have any emergency next to a convenient payphone with quarters in my pocket".

Those solar powered road-side phones can be useless as well. Apparently you can pick it up and hear it ring {preset} times, and then it will shut its self off to save its batteries (assuming someone left the phone off the hook). Naturally, hanging up to reset this "feature" will put you last in line for the queue again, if there are enough people to "overwhelm" a local system (and let's face it, if there's only a few operators to take the calls, it will probably be "overwhelmed" by relatively few simultaneous problems), this can leave you stuck *indefinitely* waiting for an answer, "help me roulette" style.

[otyug]

This may be completely unrelated, but at 1:30 pm EST on May 26 I tried to use verizon 411 from a land line and the service was down -- I was given a fast busy signal. I tried redialing intermittently for about 10 minutes before giving up.

And I thought I was inconvenienced by having to walk to a restaurant to find out if it was open. (it wasn't!)

Well, that's about a week and thirty minutes or so after the incident (on the 19th at about 10:00pm PST), and I was able to call for a ride home shortly after 911 delivered that "disconnected" message.