When to Call

• Anytime you need help with an emergency
• When someone is hurt or needs medical help due to an illness such as stroke or heart attack, or needs emergency medical help of any kind
• When you see smoke or a fire of unknown origin
• When you see someone else being hurt
• When you believe a crime is being committed
• Anytime you are injured in an accident
• Anytime you need help - such as disabled on the side of the highway

When NOT to call

• NEVER call 911 as a joke
• NEVER call 911 and hang up
• NEVER call 911 to ask for information. Always dial the administrative telephone number located in your local telephone book when you need to ask a question.
• NEVER call 911 just to see if it works

A 911 Call

It is very important for the community to understand what happens during a 911 call. We receive two different types of 911 calls. First we will discuss landline calls. A landline call is a call that will come from a home or business line. A landline provides us with critical information from the beginning. Upon answering the 911 call from a landline, it will give us the name of the resident or business, the address and city as well as what agency would respond to the address. A wireless call is one that is placed from a mobile device. When we answer a wireless 911 call we only recieve the telephone number and the wireless provider (such as AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, etc). When we answer 911 it should plot on our map, however a wireless call may not plot an exact location.

You need to be prepared to help us help you. It is very important for people to know where they are. If you are in an unfamiliar area, you need to be able to look for street/road signs or anything that will help describe your location. We cannot encourage people enough to pay attention to your surroundings. We want to get help to you as quickly as possible but knowing where to send the help is the first task.

When the Communication Officer answers 911, they say "911 where is your emergency?" The reason we ask that question first is if we would get disconnected we would know where to send help to assist the caller. We will then ask the caller´s name as well as confirm the call back number. We will then determine the chief complaint of the caller. Based off the information from the caller determines how the call will be handled.

Answering questions does not necessarily delay the dispatch of assistance. Many times one dispatcher is dispatching help while the other dispatcher continues to take additional information from you and give pre-arrival instructions. The more pertinent information you give us, the safer everyone will be. It is important to keep you safe as well as the responders. We need you to be our eyes and ears. Please do not hang up until we tell you it is ok to hang up. While on 911 with us, if it becomes unsafe for you to speak it is alright. We are trained to listen. Please leave the phone line open. We will continue to listen to what is happening and update responders.

In 2014, a statewide deployment of text-to-9-1-1 was implemented through the texTTY platform. The implementation allows us to send and recieve texts to 911. The texts to 911 is very beneficial to our hearing impaired as well as times when it would be unsafe to speak.