Don’t Misuse 911 Emergency Calls

If you really need help never hesitate to call 911. There are a few things you should know in order for dispatchers to help you. Unfortunately, some people misuse the emergency line, and doing so comes with some severe consequences. The emergency line is for emergencies; if your problem is not an emergency, don’t cause trouble for others and yourself.

You may think that you need to know lots of things to get help, but you really don’t. The first thing a call center associate will ask you is what the nature of your emergency is; this means what is wrong, or what happened. Explain what happened as clearly and as quickly as you can, as sometimes time is running low for the victim. After you explain this, they will ask for your address and name. Once they receive all the information they need, they will send someone to help and will try to keep you on the line, while you wait. Try to stay as calm as possible. If you don’t, it will be difficult for someone to help.

You do need to realize, what a real emergency is. A real emergency is a serious situation or occurrence that happens unexpectedly and demands immediate action. Does a cat stuck in a tree sound like an emergency? No, it doesn’t but some people still call for help on the 911 line for such things. Other things that aren’t emergencies are incidents in which you could manage to get yourself to the hospital or take care of the injury yourself. If you should cut yourself with a knife, but the injury is not terribly serious, drive to the ER or have someone drive you if you need stitches. Real emergencies though might include anything from someone breaking into your house, a murder, falling off a ladder or having a heart-attack. If you really think your situation is an emergency, don’t hesitate to call 911.

Remember if you call for something that isn’t an emergency you could get in quite a lot of trouble. For instance, an Oregon women recently called 911 for help and a deputy came out to help her. She thought he was really cute, and didn’t get his name at the time he was there so she decided to call in a few days later to find out more about him. She asked for the cute deputy, and he was sent to find out what the emergency was. Once he arrived and found there was no emergency, and that she had really just wanted to know his name, he arrested her for misuse of the emergency line. This is a good example of misuse of the emergency line. Two other consequences of misuse are up to a year in jail and thousands of dollars in fines.

Another result of misuse of the 911 number might be that the next time you called and really did need help, they may not come; but believe you were like the boy who cried wolf. You might also be responsible for someone else’s emergency not being taken care of while you were being helped.

The news reported a case where one of the call center employees fell asleep. If you should ever dial 911 and you don’t receive and answer, keep trying and if, necessary, hang up and call again; most of the time you will get a new assistant.

You can now see that the emergency line exists for a very special use. You can choose to use it the right or wrong way. Remember calling 911 for fun is a big offense so I wouldn’t advise anyone to try it.