9-1-1 Stories...

911 no answer

See Also: Submit Your 9-1-1 Stories Where are you located? January 16th, 2008 Where are you located? January 17th, 2008 911 no answer January 19th, 2008 We're right here! January 20th, 2008 Where are you located? January 21st, 2008 Useless 911 January 26th, 2008 Where are you located? January 31st, 2008 I'm in Cranbrook. Where? January 10th, 2009

About 2 years ago I had a similar but not so frightening experience with 911. I live in Meadowbrook which is north of Kimberley. One night I was driving home and a vehicle veered off the road in front of my van. When I approached the car it was apparent that there were no injuries but the driver was extremly drunk. She thought she was in Calgary! I immediatley phoned 911 to report the accident. I was unable to get an answer. Another one of the residents also stopped and tried 911 from her cell phone. No answer! I then phoned the Kimberley police station number (non-emergent) I can't remember if I got thru there right away or not. The short version of the story is that I and another lady tried repeatedly to get thru to 911 and we were never able to connect. When I tried phoning the police station back to report that 911 wasn't working I could only get an answering machine. We had 2 phones trying DOZENS of times. When this was all over I wrote many letters. I wrote everyone I could think of. Both mayors, all of the politicians, 911 etc.!!! I did receive answers back from everyone and I also received a phone call from the head of 911. Apparently the cell phone system was never turned on!! Unfortunately I never kept the letter that 911 sent me explaining the problems and how they fixed them. During my conversations with the 911 people they did refer to their staffing issues a lot and said that they were working on resolving them. I was assured that everything was fixed.

I had also had another issue a few months earlier. I had tried to phone 911 from the memorial arena on Dec 16,2005. I received a busy signal three times and when I was finally connected I was put on hold.....for 38 secs.

I can't imagine how stressful it must of been for those poor women waiting for 911. Both of my issues were far less stressful and they were bad enough.

As far as I am concerned it is NEVER acceptable to be put on hold for 911. Just imagine if we had a disaster, a earthquake or hurricane or something really big. Our system can't handle a "normal" day.