Have you ever called 911 (or 999 or whatever)?

In My Humble Opinion
61

Quite a few times. One in particular sticks in my mind - both sad and bizarre.

In our previous house, in the days before mobile phones, both of our next door neighbours were elderly - Mrs A on one side and Mr B on the other. Mr B was in the habit of going around to Mrs A for a cup of tea in the early evening; one summer evening, he knocked on our door to say that Mrs A wasn’t answering when he rang the bell. He was concerned. Could I go round and check on her? I had a key, and so off I went.

I need to explain that the house was laid out such that if you went in the front door you could walk from room to room in a circle round the ground floor and end up back at the front door. I let myself in at the front door, calling out, and walked through the ground floor til I came to the kitchen. Mrs A was on the floor and cold to the touch.

I was a trained first aider in those days, and at the time we were taught that the very first thing you do, if you’re on your own, is to call 999 - so I kept on walking to get the the phone, which was almost back at the front door. I dialled 999

Call center: Police, ambulance or fire service?

Me: Ambulance. (Transferred)

Call center: How can I help you?

Me: My neighbour has collapsed, I need an ambulance.

Man standing behind me: I wouldn’t bother if I were you.

Me: What?

Call center: What?

Man standing behind me: I wouldn’t bother if I were you.

Me: Who the fuck are you?

Call center: [Started yelling at me]

Man standing behind me: I’m her doctor. She’s been dead for some time.

Me: (To the call center) Look, you better talk to this guy. (Hands the phone over)

The doctor was then bollocked as a timewaster for a solid five minutes for his trouble. It turns out that Mrs A had been unwell during the day, and he had made a house call as a result. He was concerned enough that he decided to call in again on his way home, saw the door was open, let himself in, and had basically followed me round the house in a circle until he found me on the phone.

FWIW: from the position in which I found her, I’m sure that Mrs A was dead (or as good as) when she hit the floor. So that’s a little comfort - I was able to tell her daughter that it must have been very quick.

j

62
  1. Unconscious man lying in the road
  2. Domestic disturbance at neighbor’s apartment
  3. For myself - anaphylaxis
  4. For myself - anaphylaxis
  5. For myself - anaphylaxis
  6. My boss called for me - anaphylaxis
63

Only once when I saw a motorcycle t-bone a car, circa 1980.

64

I saw a guy drive straight into a telephone pole in 1993, had to call for that. It was at night and no one else was around.

In 2004 I had to call 911 when a guy on the interstate in Dallas inexplicably just stopped and was trying to turn around. I believe he was in diabetic shock or some such thing.

65

I’ve heard it’s because if another call comes in, they want all the vehicles together. Not sure if it’s true.

I’ve called 911 twice accidentally. I used to telecommute a billion years ago, and when we switched from the old portable Compaq to laptops, it was configured for dial-up (I said it was a billion years ago). Well, the guy who configured my laptop made an error with the phone number, and the first 3 numbers dialed were 911. I was sitting there wondering why I couldn’t connect to the mainframe, when the LAPD pounded on my door. I was embarrassed. When my techie guy said he’d fixed it, he hadn’t, so I ended up calling 911 again a week later. This time, they insisted that come in the house and even check upstairs. There were at least 3 guys each time. I was more angry than embarrassed the second time. :mad:

66

From a previous thread on the same subject, the story of the time Betty Boop made a break for it - https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=20854397#post20854397

67

Once because I saw a car go off the road and into a ditch. The driver and passenger were okay but the car was precariously wedged across it with about a 6’ drop into water underneath. Didn’t stick around to see how they got the car out.

Another time because I got a phone call from a number I didn’t recognize and, when I picked up, there was no answer but a background sound of some sort of domestic conflict. I called 911 and gave them the number that tried to call me but it didn’t sound like they were going to do much with it. No idea why I got the call unless it was a wrong number and then they dropped the phone.

68

My daughter was having a seizure. She had recently been discharged from a two-month hospital stay (ulcerative colitis), much of which was spent on a fentanyl drip, and was tapering down with methadone. The EMTs were at the door in less than five minutes.

I learned two things that night: the meaning of terror, and what a wonderful sound “huh?” can be.

69

The only time I ever had to call the police in 18 years of pharmacy practice was when I was at the grocery store, and we found out we had accidentally filled several forged prescriptions. (They were good forgeries, too, which was why we didn’t catch it.) Two officers showed up, and we pulled the original prescriptions and made Xerox copies, and they later used them as evidence.

Interestingly, the doctor whose prescription blanks this person copied later lost his license for being a pill mill, and that was before the opiate crisis really hit the news. This was all around the year 2000.

70

Once called to report a house fire on Route 80 East. The agent answered the call with, “Are you calling to report a house fire on Route 80 East?”

71

An outlet that exploded fire in my house (small fire simmering in the attic wiring)
A drunk stumbling down my street in broad daylight and passing out in my yard. “NO 911 operator, I am NOT going out to see what color his eyes are”
A guy beating the hell out of a woman in the passenger seat of the car while he was driving in front of me (they were already on the way, it having been reported multiple times)
A drunk passed out in front of my motel room in Prescott AZ. “NO, 991 operator, I am NOT etc…”

72

911 dispatchers receive better training now. And they are used to many different kinds of calls. Please call. My local one was steller when my neighbor broke her hip last fall. They even told me they knew which condo unit I was referring to (they have a great map) and told me to hang up because I would need to open the security door.

73

Let’s see:

Twice for a car accident that required an ambulance. Once in the States and another time in Japan (119).

Once in high school when I cleaned an office building in the evening. Someone hadn’t locked the front door properly and a drunk got in and was sleeping. The police came and had him leave the building.

74

Just last Tuesday. Hubby suddenly got such terrible leg cramps that he slid out of his chair onto the floor and any movement made the cramps worse. When they didn’t let up after a few minutes, he told me to call 911. The firemen who responded had to tote him down our many stairs in a wheeled chair rather than a stretcher to the ambulance. Fortunately, it wasn’t a sign of a stroke or anything like that. Tests showed he was just dehydrated. Five hours in the ER, a bag of saline solution pumped in and a muscle relaxer down the gullet did the trick. He was sore for a few days after but is doing well.

75

As I was talking to the operator about the house fire, I could hear the other operators getting similar calls, and the woman I was talking with started trying to triangulate the location based on where I was, and where the other people calling were, since no one called from close enough to know the address, I guess.

76

Three times.

First time, I was renting a basement room in a house in Oakville. I has moved there to go to animation school at Sheridan, and continued living there after animation school didn’t work out, and I went back to work. I had several roommates. One night i came home and found one roommate behaving strangely. He was just standing there in the kitchen, for a long time. Then he went into the bathroom and wouldn’t come out, or even respond.

I called 911 and met the paramedics at the door. I led them downstairs. They seemed to fill the small kitchen/dining area. They got the bathroom door open and retrieved my roommate, strapping him to a board and getting him out to the ambulance.

I did not see him again for some time. He was in the hospital for at least a week, but later came back home. Quite a while later, after he had moved on, he actually phoned me and said that I had saved his life. I still don’t know precisely what happened.

Second time, my co-worker was giving me a lift after work to the South Common Mall (as it was then) in Mississauga. We were waiting to turn across traffic and enter the mall parking area.

A car was waiting to turn in from the other direction. I noticed another car approaching behind it, but something seemed a little off. I watched for another moment, then said, “He’s not going to stop.”

He didn’t. He may have slowed, but crunch he went right into the back of the first car. I hauled out my new barely-used cellphone and pushed the numbers I had never dared to push. 911 answered, and I described what was going on. The 911 operator said they were already getting several calls about it.

I don’t really remember what happened next. I got dropped off, and went home.

Third time, I was living with my aunt and the carbon monoxide detector went off. I had a headache and was feeling groggy, so I called 911 to get the fire department as we had been instructed, and we went outside and sat on the step.

A fire truck pulled up, and two firefighters in breathing gear carrying detectors went in to check things out. No carbon monoxide was found, and they gave the all-clear. The fire truck had attracted a lot of attention, especially from the neighbourhood kids, so everybody talked with the firefighters briefly before they left. Better safe than sorry!

77

My 911 experiences have mostly been in various Northern California locations. For some, a city or county fire department ambulance appears with no fire truck. For others, both in populated and fairly remote locales, fire crews zoomed in first, then a private ambulance. Fire EMTs can provide any emergency care needed to stabilize a patient while private EMTs and paramedics handle transport to facilities.

I was a civilian EMT near a desert military base before 911. Either the sheriff’s local ambulance or our private rig rolled depending on who was called first and available. We didn’t follow fire crews unless multiple transport was needed. One big pile-up near the base had private, county, and base ambulances working. Messy.

78

And how exactly would you be certain that nobody was hurt? Even if nobody was injured, a collision creates a big road hazard.

I din’t know why you’d even go through the decision process of whether to call 911 or the non-emergency number. If you see a collision, just call and let the cops sort out what to do about it. That’s their job, not yours.

I have called 911 on many occasions for minor road accidents. I never once got the impression the operator thought it was not a 911-worthy call, and the response time of the cops suggests that yes, they do consider even a minor collision a matter of some urgency.

For a good 20 years I lived in locations where collisions happened pretty damn frequently. Usually just fender-benders. I’d hear a THWUNK, look out the window, see a collision, dial 911, answer a few questions (including whether anybody was injured - to which I’d answer that it didn’t look like it but I couldn’t be sure), and the cops would arrive in minutes.

So I moved this year. Busy road but no reason the stretch of road would be accident-prone. But sure enough, a few months after I moved in, I heard a THWUNK. A kid drove his SUV right into a tree a couple houses down from me. (The kid was fine. The tree was not.) I guess it’s just my fate to be a frequent 911 caller.

“Excuse me, dear. Would you mind holding off on bashing my face in for a couple of minutes while I call the police on you?” :dubious:

79

No, but I did call the fire department pre-911
My mom had pre-heated the over and went to the grocery store.
There was (IIRC) a broiler pan of bacon grease and it started on fire. Not exactly sure how old I was but probably pre high school.
Even though kids were drilled with emergency numbers I panicked and couldn’t remember the number.
Luckily we had the number on a sticker (though not on our main phone – the one in the basement)
The fire was probably out by the time they came, but they ran some big fans to remove the smoke.
My mom came back while they were there (just what a mom wants – to see the fire department parked in her driveway)

Brian

80

For the accident, I mean any fender bender I’ve been in where the other driver and I are trading insurance information on the side of the road. I haven’t been in any major accidents. So, it’s pretty clear that no one was hurt.

I don’t think I’d call the emergency number if my house had been broken into while I was out. What’s the emergency at that point? I’d just call the local number, not that this has happened to me in my sleepy NJ suburb.