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From: davef@brspyr1.brs.com (Dave Fiske)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: Can There Be 'Fake' 911 In Rural Areas?
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Date: 8 Aug 89 21:45:04 GMT
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X-TELECOM-Digest: volume 9, issue 281, message 5 of 10

In article , DT5Y@cornella.bitnet
(Peter Fleszar) writes:

>Hello net_peoples, I have a question concerning 911 laws and practices
>and the meaning of life in general.  Some of us know that some huge
>metropolises such as Ithaca have no 911 service, and that anyone who

Heck, we don't have it in Albany/Schenectady/Troy!  Albany itself is
over 100,000 in population, and the Tri-City Area is around a quarter
million.

I just checked the front pages of the phone book, and they have 7-digit
numbers listed for the local police departments.  The only exception in
this area is Saratoga County, which set up an Enhanced 911 system last
year.  Calls to 911 generate a name/address display on a computer
terminal at the dispatcher's end.  However, many towns in Saratoga are
rural, and people didn't have street numbers, just RFD-type addresses.
So first they had to try and find everybody, and assign them street
numbers and addresses, so emergency workers would have someplace to
show up at.  (Recently, officials have been complaining, too, that
people are not using the 911 system enough, considering the expense the
County went to to do it.  They speculate that people don't think their
emergencies are important enough to use it!)

A slightly humorous incident happened due to Albany's lack of 911
service.  Around 6 years ago, I was working at the Albany Urban Renewal
Agency, a unit of the city government which is located in a building
other than city hall.  All City offices were on the same PBX, however.
One time an employee at Urban Renewal accidentally sprayed her eyes
with an aerosol glue can, and one of the ladies who staffed the phones
decided to call the Fire Rescue Squad.  Well, she did what she thought
was the quickest thing--dial 'O'.  This connected her to the City Hall
Operator, who was told that the Fire Department was needed at Urban
Renewal.  Well, the City Hall operators were probably little old ladies
who had been hired thanks to their husbands' political backgrounds, and
had never even set foot at Urban Renewal.  For whatever reason,
they told the Fire Department to go to 119 Washington Avenue, instead
of the correct address of 155.  Well, 119 had been a city-owned
building, and they HAD considered locating Urban Renewal there years
previously, but it ended up as some other offices, with a McDonalds on
the ground floor.

A few of us decided to go out on the sidewalk in order to guide the
rescue workers to the right office, but instead we saw a fire truck
pass us by, heading down to the McDonalds.  We didn't know if it was
meant for us, or if there was a fire down there.  It just so
happened that one of my co-workers was coming back from lunch, saw us
running around, and figured something was wrong.  So he waved down a
cop who happened to be passing, who said the call had been for 119
Washington Avenue.  At this point the woman who had come out of the
building with me started yelling, "No, we never moved there.  They just
thought about moving us there!" Finally, we convinced the cop that the
fire truck was supposed to be responding to us, and he relayed the
information by radio.

Luckily, the woman with the glue hadn't really been injured
badly--mainly, she had glued her eyelids shut, but because she couldn't
see, she had thought she'd blinded herself.  She was treated briefly at
the Emergency Room, and was back at work the next day.

When you consider that this scenario could have involved some actual
disaster, you can see how important 911 can be.

--
"MAN USES TAPE TO STICK              Dave Fiske  (davef@brspyr1.BRS.COM)
 HIS TOE BACK ON!"
                                     Home:  David_A_Fiske@cup.portal.com
Headline from Weekly World News             CIS: 75415,163  GEnie: davef