Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!decwrl!hayes.fai.alaska.edu!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request
From: ssc!tad@beaver.cs.washington.edu (Tad Cook)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: E911 Experience
Message-ID: <9920@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 19 Jul 90 17:32:36 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 499, Message 2 of 14


In article <9611@accuvax.nwu.edu>, chris@com50.c2s.mn.org (Chris
Johnson) writes:

> I dialed 911 and said, "There's a knife fight going on in the Nicollet
> Island Park."
     
> The operator replied, "what's the address there?"  This was my first
> clue that either the operator was daft, or she was not getting any
> automatic information on my location.
        
This is standard.  They always try to verify what they see on their
ALI display.
        
> Me: "I'm in the Nicollet Island Park shelter building, the fight is 
> about 50 yards away in the ampitheatre."

> Op: "Did you say they had knives?"

> Me: "Yes, one of them has a knife."

At this point you are getting panicky, and they are probably already
rolling a squad car ... at the same time they need more info to
determine if an aid car is needed and how much response to give.

> Op: "Did you see the knife?"

> Me: "No, another person here told me he saw one."  [meanwhile, fighter
> A is cutting away pieces of fighter B, bit by bit]

> Op:  "So you didn't see a knife..."

> Me:  [exasperated]  "No, but these guys are drunk or brain damaged.  They are
> way out of it.  They are scaring the people here..."

> Op:  "Let me talk to the person who saw the knife."

At this point you are going crazy, thinking that these jerks are
putting you through the 3rd degree before they will do ANYTHING, but
the fact is that they are probably already responding.

Also, what seems like a LONG TIME when you are panicked is actually a
few seconds.

> We ended up with four police squads, a rescue truck, an ambulance and
> two park police (where were they earlier, anyway?).

Sounds like an appropriate response.

> Still later, I found out a third person had also called 911.  I guess
> once they got three different calls about the same problem from three
> different phones they managed to figure out I wasn't kidding when I
> first called.

They probably responded to the first call.  The trick is to get the
caller to calm down and give good information while sending a
response, and do it in such a way as to not piss off or panic the
caller.  Without the info, they don't know whether to send two
officers, ten officers, an aid car, fire engine, bomb sqaud, etc.

911 in a metro area can be a real juggling act, figuring out quickly
how to allocate limited resources.

> Is this how E911 is supposed to work?

Yes!

> And why didn't they know my location right away?

They probably did, but procedure told them to verify it.


Tad Cook   Seattle, WA   Packet: KT7H @ N7HFZ.WA.USA.NA  Phone: 206/527-4089 
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