I’ve not yet needed to dial 911 for myself or for anyone else, thankfully. I always seem to show up at accidents and such just at the same time the police / firefighters / medics do.
I have called 911 once though, by accident.
My husband’s grandmother had passed away a week prior and we were going to stay in her now vacant house (kind of in the country, on the outskirts of Sulfur Springs, TX–pop. 14,551) for a few days to help get things sorted out.
The first night we stayed there we ahem had several intimate moments on the fold-away bed. I celebrated not having any nearby neighbors by being quite a bit noisier than usual.
As we were catching our breath afterward we realized we could hear someone talking. It was a nice summer night and the windows were open so at first we thought someone might be outside the house, but after a minute or two we realized that the voice was coming from my cell phone and was repeating, “911, what is your emergency? Caller, can you hear me? Sulfur Springs 911, what is your emergency?”
Evidently the phone had still been on the bed where I had dropped it hours prior and we had pressed and held the 9 key at some point in our exertions, so the 911 operator has been listening to me moan and scream for who knows how long! And lucky us, both the cell phone and Hopkins County had this great 911 GPS-type locator system, so we couldn’t pretend to be calling from Kentucky or anything. We told the operator who and where we were–she told me that her system showed we were approximately this far northeast of town or whatever, and we didn’t want cops showing up and wondering what we were doing in this little old recently deceased lady’s house. The operator asked us very politely to consider using the phone’s key lock in the future and invited us to present ourselves at the Sheriff’s office the next morning for proper introductions.
We did, somewhat bashfully, introduce ourselves to the Sheriff the next day, but we did not stay in Sulfur Springs long after that.
Once. Back in high school, I was out on the porch when some woman was hysterically running down the sidewalk screaming “He’s trying to kill me and my kid” or something like that. Sure enough, some nutjob in a 70s Plymouth drives off the road, onto the grass and sidewalk, and tries (unsuccessfully) to run her and her kid oevr. That was a rather surreal day.
Twice. Both when someone was pounding on a front door late at night while I was home alone (different houses, though). First time it was someone who was tripped out on something. He tried to persuade me to open the door for just a minute. He continued pounding on the door and kicking it while he was trying to talk to me. I shook in my shoes as I talked to the operator. I was thankful for a sturdy door. He’d given up and disappeared by the time the cops showed up.
Second time it was across the hall. Neighbor’s ex. Very intoxicated. Helicopter was there in about a minute. Car got there shortly thereafter and the nice cop hauled him away.
A few times to report my ex for various horrible behavior, breaking into my apartment, refusing to leave my apartment, and other things I don’t care to share.
Once when I thought there was a fire across the street, it turned out to be a grill and the flames were reflected on the front window of the porch.
Once to report that the other side of my double was on fire.
Once to report an accident that I witnessed on the highway. Everyone was ok, but their car was overturned. It was scary.
The maybe time was for a prowler at the house across the street. I don’t remember if I called 911 or the non-emergency number.
One of the times I called 911 was an evening when we heard shouting from down the block. When we went outside there were about 15 or so of what looked to be teenage boys in the T intersection at the end of the street. There was shouting and some shoving, there was a punch thrown, and there was a low swipe like you see in the movies when somebody has a knife. So I went in and called. The police showed up with sirens wailing from and the kids took off. By the time the squad cars arrived there was no one in sight. Maybe that was the plan, just to get them to disperse, I don’t know.
The second time I called 911 was when we had a home invader. I woke up and opened our bedroom door to see a guy run away from the door of my daughters’ room. Stupid me, I followed him out of the house. Fortunately he just kept running. The police couldn’t do much that night because he didn’t leave any traces, but they did catch him eventually, when he got into somebody else’s house.
The last time was last summer when I heard the father and grown son next door shouting at each other. I probably would have let them deal with it, but as I looked through the fence to see how bad it was I saw the son push the father to the ground. I didn’t know how much farther it might go, but it seemed to be kind of out of control. I found out later the son went to jail, at least overnight, and I spent some time hoping they didn’t know who it was that called the police.
A couple of times for me. Once, at my old house, when I thought someone was trying to get into the basement. Once from the payphone at the local ER, when I was out of change, to tell them I wouldn’t be in to work that night.
This was a few years ago. I came home from work to find some commotion occurring at the edge of a small canyon near my condo that is partially developed with a couple softball fields for a community recreation center. The rest of the canyon has untouched brush and other plants.
After parking my car I walked over to see what was causing the commotion and found a small fire was burning in the brush. Deciding not to take any chances, I walked back to my condo and called 911. The operator immediately asked if I was calling about the fire. I said yes, she said firefighters were already on the way.
Walked back to the edge of the canyon, the fire truck arrived no more than two minutes later, and the fire was quickly put out.
Only once. I was on dialup internet at the time, and when I went to dial, the modem made funnier noises than usual, so I canceled the connection. A minute or two later, a dispatcher called asking if everything was okay. No one else had been using the phone, so we assumed that somehow my modem dialed 911. It never did it again though, thankfully.
Once when a guy was being beaten up outside my apartment.
From my cell phone right after a strange man jumped out from behind a column and started running at me as I approached my car late at night in an unattended parking garage then went back behind the column when I started my car and drove off.
When I was in a traffic accident
After walking my dogs past one of my neighbors houses and hearing all kinds of yelling going on plus some screams and things crashing/breaking inside.
I’ve had 911 called on my behalf a couple times-- when security guards failed to catch the guy who vandalized my vehicle and several others while beating up his girlfriend. The second time was when a couple of teens attacked me on my way home (and that was an ordeal in itself. “We’ll call campus security.” “No, call the effing cops because I’m filing assault charges and the assholes can still be caught at the scene if the cops are fast enough.”
I’ve dialled 911 to report gunfire near my apartment building (3 guys shot in downtown Vancouver), and to report phone harassment at my place of work (cops came over, took a statement, then went knocking on a door at 4.30 in the morning).
Twice, both when I was going to college in Baltimore.
Sophomore year, at a friends house, we were drinking and a few people were taking ecstasy. One of them started freaking out - I think she was seizing, and she kept saying, “I’m gonna die, I’m gonna die.” As the most sober person, I got to be the one to call 911. Everybody except the girl, her girlfriend, and another girl who lived there was quickly ushered out so we wouldn’t be caught at an underage drinking party. The ambulance passed me as I was walking back to my place.
Summer before senior year, I was mugged at knifepoint. On a Sunday morning. When it became clear that he was going to rape me, I started fighting back. Thank Og I had my ass-kicking boots on! (really, that’s what I called them) He took off right away, but I got a couple good cuts on my hand. I ran home - it was only a block away - ran some water over my hand, wrapped it in paper towels and called 911.
Many times. Just off the top of my head: to report a fight in the street, to report two burglar alarms going off, after being burgled (3 times), after an attempted burglary, after a number of car accidents, to report a fire at least once.
Twice. One was a mistake: I put 911 in speed dial so my then preschool son could use it in an emergency. Just so happened to be next to the button for my Mom…
The second was a little more spectacular. A drunk and stoned driver happened to park his F250 pickup truck in my living room, nearly on top of my wife and dog.
Twice. The first time I “called” I was too young to remember it. When I was 14 months old my mom fell down the stairs, injured her back and had a miscarriage. She could only reach the handset of the phone (too far from the cradle to dial) when she tried to get me to give her the phone, so she convinced me that playing with the buttons on the phone was a new game until I managed to hit the right buttons so she could speak to the operator.
The second time I was eight or nine. My dad and brother were out picking up a pizza when our male cat, Magic, whom we later learned had a brain tumor, completely lost it, and shredded mom’s hand and seemed inclined to attack anyone else he saw. I was ordered to shut myself in my parents’ room and call 911. The cops were pretty condesending about us being afraid of “the kitty”…at least until they got there and needed to call animal control as back up. They later told my dad that they’d been cops for years and in less scary situations that involved drugs and guns than being stalked by that poor lunatic cat. I’m glad that I didn’t see him put down, since they did it at the apartment. We then spent the next several hours at the e.r. where they did a poor job of patching up mom’s hand and gave her the wrong antibiotics so she ended up spending several days in the hospital the following week to treat the infection by IV…
Never dialed the numbers with my own digits. Once when driving down a major interstate, however, I was traveling in the right hand lane with a semi passing me on the left. Once past me, the big boy wheeled into the slow lane very quickly, clipping the car in front of him. The little sports car went flying to the left in a spin, hit the median, flipped through the air, and hit an enormous pole in the median. My buddy in the passenger seat called 911 to report the incident, and to give the liscense number of the truck driver, who never even slowed down!
I’ve called a handful of times, for fights in the neighborhood. Once it was my downstairs tenants, whom I evicted shortly afterwards. Another time two voices, male and female, were in a screaming fight in the house across the street. I might have left them to it, but I could hear someone say “I’ll kill you” and I could also hear children crying in the same house.
We (my brother, his roommate, his best friend, and I) were driving from Los Angeles to Moab, Utah for a weekend of mountain biking and camping. We left LA at around 8:00 p.m, planning to drive through the night and arrive at Moab around 8-9 a.m. About 20 miles north of Las Vegas, we were delayed for 3 hours at around 2 a.m. because some jackass had stolen a car, gotten into a high-speed chase, then wrecked and held the cops hostage with a gun. So the Cops shut down the freeway.
About 6:00 a.m, I was driving just as the sun was coming up. We’re going up a bit of an incline, and I notice that the car is running a bit sluggish. I figure it’s no big deal, since we’re pretty fully loaded to begin with (4 people + camping gear). Then I look out the side mirror (couldn’t see out the back one) and notice that we have a huge trail of smoke following us. I start to wake my brother as I’m pulling over to the side of the road. When I stop the car, flames start shooting out the wheel well.
I call 911 since I’m the only one that has any clue where we are (and even then I wasn’t quite sure). The other three manage to put the fire out before it did too much damage, using a few cans of Mountain Dew and a bunch of desert sand. Needless to say, we never made it to Moab, although we did get to spend a lovely weekend in a little place called Mesquite, Nevada (right on the NV/AZ border).
The car’s career was officially over. Turns out the transmission had decided to fail catastrophically, spraying fluid all over the place, which ignited when it contacted the engine block. And my brother still won’t let me live it down.
We then spent the next several hours at the e.r. where they did a poor job of patching up mom’s hand and gave her the wrong antibiotics so she ended up spending several days in the hospital the following week to treat the infection by IV…