What to Do When 911 Doesn't Work

Last night, Justin and I were awakened by gunshots being fired in our neighborhood. The shots were actually being fired right outside our house. I got up, grabbed the phone and called 911. The line was busy. I hung up and dialed again. Still busy. I dialed at least 5 more times with the same result.

I thought maybe there was a problem with my portable phone, so I headed into the office to use the land line. This was the last place I wanted to be since the shots seemed to be coming from the front of the house and the office is in the front of our house with a nice, big window that's right in line with the phone.

I slid into my chair and kept it as close to the wall as possible and leaned over to dial 911 on the land line. This time, the call just would not connect. I tried again. Same thing. I felt like I was in the middle of my worst nightmare. People outside were shouting, there was gunfire and here I was trying to dial 911 and the call wasn't going through.

What good is 911 if you can't get through? I didn't feel like I had any other option but to keep trying. So try and try I did. Finally, after several minutes, I found success. I told the 911 operator what was happening and she said she'd send the police and that was the end of the call.

By the time the police arrived, everyone involved in the incident had vanished like a bunch of cockroaches running from the exterminator. The police visited our neighbor's house and then left. Apparently, there was nothing suspicious going on any longer so there was no reason to stick around.

Perhaps if I'd been able to get through to 911 when I had first dialed, the police would have gotten my call a few minutes sooner and they may have been able to nail the shooter.

This morning, I found three 9mm shell casings and one 9mm unspent bullet in the street right outside our front door. We called the police and learned another scary fact. Nobody had actually responded to my shots fired call. They had responded to a call about the party going on next door.

The officer who responded this morning was curious that nobody had responded to my call about the shots fired. He hinted that perhaps since calls about the party and my call about the gunshots happened at the same time, my call must have been incorrectly prioritized. I wondered if maybe the dispatcher thought I was simply hearing fireworks and didn't take my call seriously or if the dispatch system screwed up and mis-prioritized my call. I used to work for a company that programmed 911 software. It does occasionally mis-prioritize calls. Who knows?

I was horrified to think that the officers who responded to the party next door last night had no clue that shots had been fired. These officers got lucky. They could have been walking right into a war zone and they wouldn't have ever known it. That's scary!

I just kept thinking had this been a medical emergency or had the gun person been breaking into our house or shooting at us or at some other person, the added minutes it took for me to get connected to 911 could very well have cost Justin and I or someone else his or her life...

Fortunately, we got lucky last night. Nobody was injured or killed (that we or the police are aware of). There wasn't even any visible property damage to any of the houses or cars in the neighborhood. Even so, the incident was extremely terrifying.

I was up most of the night so I had a chance to do a lot of thinking. I can't change how a dispatcher or 911 system prioritizes a 911 call, whether my information gets passed along to officers and whether or not the police will respond, but I can change how much time I waste trying to call for help.

From now on, if Justin and I ever get a busy signal when we call 911 or if the call won't go through on the first try, we will hang up and call the police dispatch line directly. Trust me, in an emergency, the last thing you want to hear is a busy signal or the endless silence that comes when a call won't connect.

So that said, I urge everyone to go and find the phone number to your local police department's dispatch office. Right now! Write it down. Glue it on the phone. Teach your kids how to use it in the event 911 doesn't work because, as we found out last night, 911 sometimes doesn't work.

Having a backup plan in an emergency may very well save your life or the life of someone you know and love.