With the nationwide phone service outage this past week, many people were faced with a new fear of what would happen in an emergency with their main source of communication rendered useless.
Have no fear! Even with no phone service, 911 can still come to the rescue in an emergency situation.
“If that does happen, you can still dial 911,” explained 911 Communications Director Jackie Matthews. “We have technology in there now where if the phone doesn’t ring, it will still pop up on another software that we have that is actually provided to us for free. Of course, we have to monitor that, and when we see it, being that you don’t have phone service, we’ll call that number back and leave a voice message. That way, when you do get service, you’ll know we tried to call you back. It also pings your general location where you may be, so we’ll still send an officer that way to see what’s going on.”
The response from 911 may also come in a text message. If 911 texts first, then it is possible to text them back.
“If a text message comes through from Clarke County 911, it is legit,” added Matthews. “Just answer it. You can text back to it. We’re not full-blown text to 911 yet, but we’re working on it. You can’t start the text conversation with 911, but you can respond to the message when 911 texts you first.”
Even with the outage this past week, they were able to accept emergency calls. It may just take more time for help to arrive. Just don’t give up and keep calling.
“We did get a few calls during the outage that didn’t actually come in through the phone. We were monitoring that other software and called them back. They did have a little service where they were actually able to talk at that time. AT&T is constantly working on it and sends us messages when they have outages and letting us know that they are monitoring and trying to get everything up and working,” expressed Matthews. “Those numbers still show up when they try to call us, and we still call them back to see what’s going on. Don’t just say that there’s no phone service and not call. There may be a glitch where the phone actually rings. Just keep trying. We do have a type of technology where if you’re walking, it shows up on our map.”
The main thing is to stay calm and be as patient as possible since the response may take a little longer to find the location and all.
“Just be mindful and try not to panic,” informed Matthews. “We want to get the information and will try to get them some help as soon as we can. Don’t think that nobody’s coming because somebody will be coming.”
One thing the nationwide outage has proven is how important it is to have a plan in place to be able to maintain communication in the event of a service outage. Luckily, there are already things in place for emergency calls, regardless of coverage.
