# Can phone numbers contain 911? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 22, 2001, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-phone-numbers-contain-911/88938 "2001-10-22T20:19:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![NoSubstitute](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ce73a5/32.png) [@NoSubstitute](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NoSubstitute)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2001, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-phone-numbers-contain-911/88938/1 "2001-10-22T20:19:35Z")
Sorry if this has already been covered but my search did not seem to turn up an answer to my question, so… When our company moved to a new location we were told not to include 911 as a “call me right away” code when paging someone. We were told that the phone system in our building has software in it to detect 911 being entered and automatically alerts emergency services. This in turn results in our main office getting a call from emergency services to ask “what’s the emergency?” To which they answer, “huh?” Anyway, we do not include 911 when paging. After watching the movie Heat last week in which Al Pacino gets a page with 911 as part of the phone number I began wondering if I had to call someone that had a 911 number in their phone number what would happen? Does anyone know of a phone number that contained 911 in it? ---
**Author:** ![wolfman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/a8b319/32.png) [@wolfman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfman)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2001, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-phone-numbers-contain-911/88938/2 "2001-10-22T20:37:41Z")
Being incredibly bored I just went to Qwestdex and did a reverse lookup on a few random number with 911 in them and got a couple hits. So there are legitimate numbers with 911 in them. As far as what would happen with your system, I have no idea. I’ve never heard of that, and it sounds like a really bad idea. ---
**Author:** ![Tamex](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ccd318/32.png) [@Tamex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamex)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2001, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-phone-numbers-contain-911/88938/3 "2001-10-22T20:50:36Z")
Yes, they can. One of my friend’s old phone numbers ended in “9116”. ---
**Author:** ![Knighted\_Vorpal\_Sword](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ac91a4/32.png) [@Knighted\_Vorpal\_Sword](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knighted_Vorpal_Sword)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2001, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-phone-numbers-contain-911/88938/4 "2001-10-22T20:59:58Z")
My parent’s phone number ends in 8911. ---
**Author:** ![NoSubstitute](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ce73a5/32.png) [@NoSubstitute](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NoSubstitute)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2001, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-phone-numbers-contain-911/88938/5 "2001-10-22T21:17:51Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by NoSubstitute \* > \*\*After watching the movie Heat last week in which Al Pacino gets a page with 911 as part of the phone number I began wondering if I had to call someone that had a 911 number in their phone number what would happen? > \*\* I did not mean to ask what would happen if I dialed a number that had 911 in it at work since I already explained that. What I wanted to know was if anyone knew of a number containing 911? Based on the replies posted it seems that some phone number do contain 911. Thanks for the responses. ---
**Author:** ![Dale\_The\_Bold](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/41988e/32.png) [@Dale\_The\_Bold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dale_The_Bold)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2001, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-phone-numbers-contain-911/88938/6 "2001-10-22T21:28:48Z")
When I was in college, the three digit prefix was unnecessary for on-campus calls and the number for campus information was 4911. It made it easy to remember, but I always imagined someone being chased by an axe wielding madman accidentally pressing 4 on the phone… “Campus Information” “Help, I’m being chased by a crazed murderous lunatic, what do I do?” “Hang on a minute, let me look it up…” ---
**Author:** ![Achernar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e274bd/32.png) [@Achernar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Achernar)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2001, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-phone-numbers-contain-911/88938/7 "2001-10-22T21:47:53Z")
I had a friend whose number was 991-1xxx or something. One time he was dialing home from school, an accidentally forgot to enter a 9 first to dial out. He got emergency dispatch. I’m sure, though, that if your phone number is only three digits long, you get a lot of wrong numbers. ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2001, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-phone-numbers-contain-911/88938/8 "2001-10-22T23:34:26Z")
I have a database of many numbers and did a qucik search for 911 - came up many many times. it could log as a emergency call - but it’s so common that nobody pas it much business. I sometimes use 505 (for S.O.S) as an alternitive. ---
**Author:** ![NoSubstitute](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ce73a5/32.png) [@NoSubstitute](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NoSubstitute)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2001, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-phone-numbers-contain-911/88938/9 "2001-10-22T23:50:23Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by k2dave \* > \*\*I have a database of many numbers and did a qucik search for 911 - came up many many times. > > it could log as a emergency call - but it’s so common that nobody pas it much business. I sometimes use 505 (for S.O.S) as an alternitive. \*\* Good idea k2dave. Thanks p.s. I guess this thread can be closed if desired by the moderators. ---
**Author:** ![Corrvin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/bbce88/32.png) [@Corrvin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Corrvin)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2001, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-phone-numbers-contain-911/88938/10 "2001-10-23T01:14:48Z")
On some phones, if you call a person’s pager number, it answers, and then enter a numeric page, if you later hit the redial button, it’ll redial whatever your page was. So if I call your pager number and the pager message I send is 911, then if later I hit redial, it’ll dial 911. Sounds like a good reason not to page with it to me. Corr ---
**Author:** ![vanilla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/f19dbf/32.png) [@vanilla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vanilla)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2001, 1:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-phone-numbers-contain-911/88938/11 "2001-10-23T13:26:26Z")
Yes! I was once an at-home telemarketer. I called a number, something like 691-1\*\*\*. Accidentally, the 6 didn’t take. 911 answered and I went “OH! I’m sorry!” She said, “Is everything okay?” I said yes and was worried cause I’d heard you could get in trouble for calling without an emergency. ---
**Author:** ![Zazie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/6f9a4e/32.png) [@Zazie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zazie)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2001, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-phone-numbers-contain-911/88938/12 "2001-10-23T17:12:43Z")
My little story… At work we have to dial 9 to get an outside line, so you figure the 9 doesn’t “count” for anything… well it does, my boss once messed up and skipped a number in the phone number he was dialing and it did not take into consideration the 9 to get out and dialed 911… we had the cops show up… I was pretty amused… (Hey, not to bother the cops for nothing) because my boss didn’t want anybody to know he dialed 911, ha ha! At school, I dialed 911 without knowing I did it… being the French that I am 911 did not pop into my head as being the emergency number I know it is now. I was trying to call someone and I guess I wrote the number wrong, on my piece of paper it started with 911! I was asked what my emergency was and I was so confused!! I apologized a million times to the dispacher when I understood my mistake, but they sent police campus at my door anyway… I was so embarassed!