I came upon an overturned logging truck once on a very rural road. I was fixing to call 911 when I saw the guy driving was very obviously deceased, in a violent way. I won’t describe it.
I just called the Sheriffs office and told them what road it was on. They asked if the driver was breathing. They said to render aid. I asked “how?”. They said “mouth to mouth resuscitation”. I told them there was no mouth there, anymore.
Awful thing to see.
911 was called for me, and actually saved my life by a Doper in another state. (RIP @dropzone )
When I was about ten, my grandmother collapsed. My mother yelled for me to call an ambulance while she and my older brother carried her into bed. This was in the days before my hometown had 911 service, but we had the separate numbers for the ambulance, fire, and police on a sticker on the phone, so I called. Then I went outside to flag the ambulance down. My grandmother required a pacemaker and lived another couple of years if I remember the timeline correctly.
There were a couple of times I would have called 911 if I’d had a cell phone, both times because of drivers going the wrong way on a divided highway. The second incident, around 2007, is what prompted me to finally get my first cell phone. I haven’t seen such a thing since then.
First time I was working in a college library and a student passed out and broke her arm when she fell. Less than a week later, an elderly lady across the street fell and broke her arm. Several years later our family was driving on the New York State Thruway in a big rain storm when we saw a concrete pylon in one of the lanes. More recently I’ve called when neighbors were unresponsive. One guy was drunk and blacked out in a park down the street. Another was a gentleman in his eighties who had been driving and hitting parked cars. I asked him if he was ok, but he didn’t respond.
Almost a meet cute, but unfortunately real life doesn’t work out that way.
Similar, when my Dad’s building was new the elevator would get stuck a lot. He and another guy got stuck in it, and I was on the outside. The call button inside the elevator would ring once then disconnect, so I looked up the number and called the elevator company.
It was a weekend, so their nearest tech was over an hour away. They said to call 911. About 5 minutes later a big burly fireman showed up and used their access key to get into the elevator room and press the reset button.
I had to call twice from my house. Late one night (early one morning?) a car knocked over our recycle bin, which was in the street. Then they were taking pictures and laughing. I called 911 to report “mischief,” because I didn’t know what else to call it. She asked if a car had rundown my trash cans. I gave the model of the car, but never received a follow up. The recycle bin was heavy due to being full of glass bottles, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it did some damage to the car.
Other time was when a tree fell on the power line to the house. That pulled the overhead lines low enough that they were arcing to a bush, and it was smoking. Fire department came out, looked at it for a while, and then said, “it’s not on fire yet, so we can’t do much. Call us back if it goes on fire.”
I’d already called the power company, but they used their contact at the power company to reiterate the urgency of the situation. First light a guy came out from the power company, and with a little electric Makita chainsaw cleared the fallen tree off the line. He was better than the tree guys who I hired to clean it up.
I didn’t get a picture of the burning at night, but here is the branch after the power company guy cut it down.
Thanks. It was a bad time, but as was the experience of others in the thread, everyone involved, from the 911 operator to the paramedics to the police, were extremely professional and compassionate.
Once at work when the electrical transformer on the pole across the street suddenly exploded and started burning.
Once for an accident. I had just stopped at an intersection as the light turned red when a guy on a motorcycle revved up and shot past me and ran into a car just turning left. The front end of the car practically exploded as did the bike, and the rider flew over the hood and smashed headfirst onto the road about 15 feet further. I was sure he had broken his neck and was dead, but he was alive albeit wheelchair-bound when I testified at his trial for running the red a couple of months later. (This was what prompted me to finally get a dashcam.)
Once when I, a male senior citizen, woke up in the middle of the night with severe pain in my left arm and chest. It turned out to be a pulled muscle, but everyone involved repeatedly told me to ALWAYS call 911 if anything like it happened again!
I called 1-911 once as a tween in the 80s to see what would happen. (Local 911 picks up – if you hang up on them in a panic, they’ll call you back and your stepmom gets scolded.) Other than that, I’ve been able to get by with 615 862-8600, Nashville’s non-emergency police line and the subject of a catchy jingle that will be stuck in my head for a few hours.
I have called many, many times. The first time I can recall, I was a child calling because something was wrong with my mother. She explicitly told me to call 911. I knew about 911 because they teach you that in school, so I knew what to expect. But I remember wondering if Mom was going to die. (It probably wasn’t anything near that serious.)
I’ve called for myself on occasion. One time a couple years ago I called because I couldn’t get up off the couch without tremendous pain. Sciatica.
The most recent time I called was Friday morning, when my landlady asked me to come in and check on her husband, whom she’d correctly suspected had died in his sleep the previous night.
My wife is T1D, type 1 diabetic, and early on in our marriage when her blood sugar crashed and I didn’t know what to do to help her, I called 911 3-4x. The first time was scary for me because I actually saw her faint with a controlled fall to the ground. I didn’t understand what was going on and I was pretty scared. Fortunately where I live they’re able to respond quickly, in a matter of 3 or 4 minutes.
With her T1D and recent technology, I’ve been getting her blood sugar levels remotely on my phone with an app from Dexcom. Once about 10-15 years ago I was away for a weekend on a church men’s retreat about 2½ hours away and I could see her blood sugar dropping. I tried many ways to contact her, but no joy. With my phone I could see she was at home. I called 911 from 2½ hours away and explained the situation and they were amazed that I knew this from my location. I gave the responders authorization to break in. When they found her she was lying in bed (it was nighttime). I spoke with the paramedic and told him to first check her blood sugar levels. They did, they treated her and took her to the E.R., and I rushed back to meet her there.
The last time I called 911 was because I witnessed a hit-and-run on the highway. I said, “Oh no you don’t, not on my watch.” I immediately gave chase while calling 911. I was able to catch up to the guy and give an accurate description of him, his vehicle, and the license plate. I nabbed that sucker.
I have reactive hypoglycemia, and called for myself on morning when I woke up with a blood sugar of 45-- that has happened before-- I make breakfast right away, and this is a morning I start out with a small bowl of some kind of sweet cereal, like Frosted Flakes, about half a serving that the box suggests, and follow up with eggs, cheese, or dinner leftovers. Usually fixes things fine.
Well, 10 minutes later, my sugar was only.
Cutting to the chase, my sugar would NOT stay up, no matter what I did. It would go back up briefly, them down again. DH had taken the boychik to school, and I was alone. Called 911, which replicated phenomenon, then put me on an IV with dextrose, and took me to the hospital.
When my son was very little, he accidentally pressed a speed-dial button on the phone which called 911. Which resulted in a call with no caller on the line. There was an immediate callback, but amazingly, the phone didn’t ring in the ordinary way, it was more of a strange, loud buzzing sound. Apparently the telephone system has more wonders than we know!
I explained what had happened but got chewed out anyway – apparently the cuteness of little kids playing with telephones was lost on 911 operators!
Once, when I heard what sounded like gunshots coming from the back parking lot of my apartment high-rise. A look out the window, and they were gunshots, guys brandishing pistols and actually shooting at each other from between parked cars.
So I called 911. The 911 operator was extremely officious or extremely dumb. “What kind of guns are they using, sir?”
“I dunno. Handguns.”
“Revolvers or semi-automatics, sir?”
“Damned if I know. Just get the cops here fast. Jesus!”
It was in the news the next day. A few Russian gangsters decided to have a shootout in our back parking lot over a drug deal, or something.
I dunno, maybe I’m stupid, but it seems to me that “There’s a shootout in the back parking lot of [address] and we need cops!” should not be met with “What kinds of handguns sir?” Just dispatch cops now, and ask such questions later.
What often happens is that police (or other appropriate emergency responders) are dispatched right away, but the 911 operator asks more questions in order to provide any possibly useful additional information to the officers en route.
Good point, and a valid one. Thing is, I was on the sixth floor, it was dark, and all I could tell was that the gunfighters were using handguns. I wasn’t about to pop my head up in a lighted room, lest I become a target. Once I realized what was happening, I was actually on the floor through it all, including calling 911. That seemed to be the safest option.
Last year I woke to what I thought was my fan (blowing in outside air) making weird noises, so walked over and jiggled it a couple of times, noise still there…
Only then did I look out and see 2 guys in grey hoodies trying to break into the neighbor’s car right next to mine (a Hyundai–I drive a Honda manual which most car thieves aren’t interested in). Promptly dialed 911 but I was half asleep and forgot to get the plate number. The dispatcher even tried to blow it off by suggesting it was the rightful owner trying to break into his own car. By the time I got done with the convo the goons had finally broken in and had already hotwired it and were pulling out. I should have hit the panic button on my car fob to scare them off…
Eventually the cops got there long after it was too late, gave them my statement, and when the supervisor followed up later that morning I apologized to the owner and let them know what happened.
Otherwise I called it on myself in 2009 after too much caffeine triggered a heart arrythmia and I wasn’t sure I was up to driving the half a mile to the hospital. Then twice when my mom had strokes, 2014 and 2023-she was very stubborn both times and refused to allow me to call for the ambulance until I finally convinced her several hours later. [2nd time eventually led to her death a week later-the initial stroke was survivable but a week later she got two devastating ones in each hemisphere]
Most people don’t realize units are being dispatched while they are talking. The additional questions are often just to keep the caller on line to give additional information if the situation changes. Without the continuing questions many people would hang up. It’s basic dispatcher training to keep the caller talking.
