Path: utzoo!telecom-request Date: Fri, 17 May 1991 20:20:05 GMT From: David Lemson Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Cellular 911 Calls Message-ID: Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana Sender: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 11, Issue 368, Message 7 of 7 Lines: 39 blake@pro-party.cts.com (Blake Farenthold) writes: > Here in Southwestern Bell Mobile Systems Area (Corpus Christi, TX) > SWBMS promotes FREE 911 Calls and urges you to use the service. A > call to 911 gets you a Southwestern Bell (RBOC not Mobile Systems I > THINK she Identifies herself as Southwestern Bell) operator who seems > to have no idea you dialed 911. You end up having to ask her to > connect you to 911 ... she does, and then spends about three to five In St. Louis (also SBMS) there are two numbers for 911: 311 for Illinois and 511 for Missouri (or is it the other way around? Once I was in an accident and dialed the wrong one by mistake because I was so shaken up -- the Illinois man was nice about it, though, but I did have to hang up and redial). Every time I've called 511, I get a 911 operator who then connects me with the emergency line of the police of the city I happen to be in! I suppose that if someone was hurt, he or she wouldn't take the time to put you on hold (I hope!) and connect you with the right city, but it's rather disheartening to be put on hold when you call 911. (Especially when it's you who was in the accident, you end up telling your story twice - grrr...) > FYI I toured the 911 dispatch center a couple of months ago. [story about dispatch center deleted] > The whole dispatch station is protected by a halon fire protection > system ... when the alarm goes off they operators and dispatchers have > a couple of minutes to evacuate the dispatch area before the > (apparently deadly) halon is released. Incidentally, Halon works by sucking up all of the available oxygen, thus killing the fire -- that's why it's a bad thing to be in the same room with vast amounts of Halon. David Lemson University of Illinois Computing Services Consultant Internet : lemson@uiuc.edu UUCP :...!uiucuxc!uiucux1!lemson