Reverse 911 calls

[rk911]

Sounds like a slippery slope, one like weather alerts. After we were getting weather warnings for any thunderstorm within 50 miles, we turned off all the alerts. Somehow people survived years ago without so many warnings.

If you have a fairly modern alert radio it can be programmed for certain alerts for your county.

 

[Koolau]

Tell me you are kidding . . .

I wish I were.

 

[Koolau]

This can happen. It's all based on the nature of the call. In our area 9-1-1 is used anytime a police, fire or EMS response is needed...and not JUST for EMERGENCY calls. The calls are classified as:

- Priority 1: Threat to life
- Priority 2: Threat to property
- Priority 3: Everything else

We wanted all calls for service on 9-1-1 because we learned that some people could not decide what an emergency was. True example: A man was home cleaning his handgun when it went off and shot him in the abdomen. Thinking he was not hurt badly (he was) he called his local PD station number instead of us. The desk clerk was about to transfer the call to us when the caller passed out. Since the call went to the station we had no automatic address info or callback number but the caller got lucky because the desk clerk recognized his voice as a neighbor and notified us. We dispatched EMS which got to him in time.

During high volume call times the number of inbound 9-1-1 calls can exceed the number of available operators. An operator taking a Priority 2 or 3 call might have to put that caller on hold to answer another call to determine its priority. Didn't happen often but it did happen. And our operators were usually dispatching calls on the radio AND answering 9-1-1 calls which made for very busy shifts. Watching the activity in the center was like watching a ballet. Lots of moving parts.

Yeah, I didn't get so far as to tell them that my FIL was (I thought - and thought rightly) having a stroke. IIRC the pick up simply said "Please hold."

 

[badatmath]

Yeah, I didn't get so far as to tell them that my FIL was (I thought - and thought rightly) having a stroke. IIRC the pick up simply said "Please hold."

Terrible. They should have asked the problem.

But I still do not think I should be notified about missing persons . . . and by calling my landline by definition I am home so . . . I'm not going to find them.