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If everyone did this at once, it might overwhelm the call center, but in general a E911 call center needs to have far more capacity than there are calls (or oth
by cbhl 12y ago
If everyone did this at once, it might overwhelm the call center, but in general a E911 call center needs to have far more capacity than there are calls (or otherwise an urgent call might go unanswered).
My understanding is the key rules are:
1) wait for an operator and do not hang up (because if you hang up they assume something bad happened and will send police/fire/etc to you), and,
2) tell them that it is a test call so that they can assess whether they can spend time on you or should hang up to answer a more urgent call.
I'm sure kids call 911 enough as a prank that your test call won't have a meaningful impact on call volume.
- click170 12y agoIn my area there were actually advertisements on the radio asking people to use the lock function on their cellphone to prevent pocket-calls to 911 a few years back. They claimed it had become a problem. It leads me to wonder if your comment about capacity (which I assumed was the case as well) does not apply evenly everywhere.
- cbhl 12y agoWell, if you don't tell them it's a test call and you pocket dial, I would hope that the 911 call center would assume that you're being held hostage and send police/fire/etc. to you. So, IMO, that the system isn't meant to handle this type of false alarm isn't reflective of call center capacity but rather fire/police/ambulance capacity (and also annoying everyone involved).