City’s 911 system will receive texts
STAMFORD — It could be that you are awakened in the middle of the night by the sound of an intruder, grab your cellphone and hide in a closet, but don’t want to call 911 because your voice will reveal you.
Maybe you are driving alone down Washington Boulevard when you feel symptoms of a heart attack, so you pull over and call 911, but find you are too breathless to speak.
You could be under assault by an abusive spouse, escape into a room but fear calling 911 because if he hears, he will explode into a worse rage and knock down the door.
Or perhaps your car veers off the Merritt Parkway during a rainstorm and you are injured and trapped in a ditch but can’t call 911 because you are hearing-impaired.
There is help for such emergencies. Now you can text 911 rather than call.
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy launched the state’s text-to-911 capability two weeks ago, and in that time, Stamford Emergency Communications has received about a dozen messages, dispatcher Erin Walsh said. Roughly half were accidental and the rest were legitimate 911 requests — just not by text.
“They could have called,” Walsh said. “They just chose to text.”
That’s not the purpose of the service, according to Malloy’s office. Calling 911 is the best way to contact police, fire or ambulance services. Text is to be used only when absolutely necessary. The rule is: Call if you can; text if you can’t.
It’s for good reason, Walsh said. When someone calls 911, the system cannot at first pinpoint the address. It only provides a radius, Walsh said.
“While the phone line is active we continue to get a better radius on the location. The phone is an open connection,” she said. “With text, we get only one radius. Once you send the text, the connection is closed, so I can’t ask the computer to give me a better location.”
That’s why it’s important when texting to first type in an address,
Walsh said.
“Always start with the address of the emergency,” she said. “That’s the first thing we ask for, even with a call.”
Another reason dispatchers want you to call, if you can, is because of dialing mishaps, Walsh said. The Stamford emergency communications center gets a good number of accidental calls from people intending to dial the 914 area code or from business phones that require dialing 9 first for an outside line.
“If the first three digits are 911, it comes to us,” Walsh said. “A lot of times people notice right away that they accidentally called 911 and they try to disconnect, but as soon as it’s dialed, we get it. If it’s a call, I can hear the sounds of the phone moving around in your pocket and realize it’s an accident.”
But if it’s a text, the dispatcher writes a return text and waits for a response. If the person who accidentally texted is too embarrassed to write back, the dispatcher is left waiting, which stops them from handling other calls, Walsh said.
“It’s better to go through with the call, or text back, to let us know it was an accident,” she said.
Two other cautions come with the text-to-911 service, Walsh said.
“If someone can only text in another language, they should definitely call because that way we can get a translator,” she said. “The system can’t translate a text into English.”
And though an emoji may seem like an efficient way to go, the 911 texting system can’t read them, Walsh said.
“If you are calling about a person with a knife, you can’t text a picture of a knife,” she said. “You have to write the word.”
To use the system, which is free, enter 911 in the “to” or “recipient” field of a mobile device. Connecticut plans to add a function that will allow people to text photos and videos to 911.
According to the Federal Communications Commission, more than 70 percent of all 911 calls come from cellphones. Text-to-911 service is offered in about a third of the country, but it’s expanding quickly.
The message on text-to-911 is that it must be used appropriately, Walsh said.
“My only fear is that people will abuse it — no one likes to make a phone call anymore,” she said. “If you can call, call.”