
When 911 calls fail - gr2020
http://www.theverge.com/2014/10/3/6414949/911-call-failures-fcc
======
nathannecro
Please HN, there are a few comments in this thread talking about "taking
action" if you happen to be a bystander during an emergency.

Let me implore you. If the area isn't safe, do not even attempt to enter the
scene. Fires can instantly flare up and engulf a room in seconds. Rivers can
be so cold they cause shock upon entering the water and, in some cases, they
cause cardiac arrest. Tiny pieces of broken glass can cause deep, sometimes
life-threatening lacerations. An accident on the side of the road can
immediately escalate into a multi-vehicle incident if another driver doesn't
pay attention.

What we don't want to happen is for you, the hero, to become another patient.
Not only are you putting your life in danger, you're also increasing the risk
for your rescuers as well.

What you can do is this:

1\. Secure the scene. If the accident occurred at the side of the road, park
behind the accident and turn your hazards on. Wave at traffic to slow down and
be cautious around the accident. If there is a house fire, try to find the gas
shut-off valve and turn it off.

2\. Assist the location of the scene. It's often difficult for EMS to locate
the scene of the emergency. Standing near the front of the building or the
entrance to the parking lot and flagging the ambulance/PD/fire down helps a
ton. Leading them directly to the scene is just as important.

3\. Use your common sense. Don't let the panic take hold of you. Be rational,
reasonable. I'm not saying you should never try to help someone, just make
sure that YOU are safe FIRST before heading in to assist.

I hold EMT/Paramedic certs and volunteer in my spare time.

Thanks.

Edit: I also want to point out that there is generally very little anyone can
do aside from basic management of the ABC's (airway, breathing and
circulation) without equipment. Some of that equipment is located onboard a
fire truck or an ambulance. Most of that equipment is usually found inside the
operating room of your local hospital. The faster the patient is moved safely
to the local ED, the better it is.

~~~
tomjen3
>I also want to point out that there is generally very little anyone can do
aside from basic management of the ABC's (airway, breathing and circulation)
without equipment

When I took CPR causes we were told to start doing cpr before calling an
ambulance, unless we thought it was a heart attack (since the person would be
death by the time the ambulance arrived otherwise). Was this wrong?

~~~
mrestko
You're usually taught to yell for help as you start CPR. There's not really a
way to tell if a person has a had a heart attack without an EKG or labs. You
can assess for cardiac arrest (that's the whole reason for CPR), and any time
the heart is stopped, the best chance for the patient is immediate, high
quality CPR.

The only exception to this rule is if you are in an area where no one will
find you unless you call for help yourself. For example, if you are home alone
with someone and you start CPR, you will probably need to stop out of
exhaustion before someone will hear you cries for help. In this case, you need
to call 911 first. If you're in a mall or something, then leave the emergency
call to someone else and get started on chest compression.

------
MichaelGG
I started the first VoIP 9-1-1 service for providers. 9-1-1 and similar
emergency response services are a great boon. Something most people just take
for granted and figure it just works like magic. The job those people have is
mostly thankless and comes with killer stress. (Listening to a few recordings,
I'd have a breakdown within a day on that job.)

On a more HN-note, I saw an interesting glimpse into how some of the
responders view privacy. In context of what to do for VoIP phones, the general
feeling at one NENA meeting was "ISPs should provide detailed location
information on any access lines to VoIP devices". The implication there is
that any software on your computer or network would be able to do a real "geo
IP" lookup because your ISP would have to provide your address of record to
anything using the connection. No one seemed to realise the massive problem
this would create.

The other interesting thing is that PSAPs are heading towards an
interconnected model. The idea being (at least a few years ago) that PSAPs
could all be on the Internet, and transfer calls to each other with SIP + some
nutty extensions, bridge in translators, a real utopia. Which sounds nice
until you realise so many PSAPs are woefully underfunded and in no position to
be running critical infrastructure on the Internet. Hopefully states would
step up and provide adequate funding and it could be pulled off as a
government project. But it's not so clear, and there's a long way to go. One
PSAP told us he didn't want us sending calls from "Internet phones" because
his PSAP equipment might get a virus (over his voice line.)

~~~
Fogest
SWAT'ing would be way too easy if there was a really easy VoIP solution to
call 911.

~~~
MichaelGG
SWAT'ing is trivially performed. Sign up for VoIP service, dial 911. Many
systems also have normal phone numbers that go into a 911 center, or to a
failover call processing place.

Police departments will also let you submit crime reports online. I "swatted"
myself by accident after filing a report because one of my license plates was
missing. I didn't get any follow up, so I figured I'd just go deal with it
later. A bit after that, a cop pulls me over, draws his weapon, aims --
because my car pops up as stolen on his scanner. If someone was to file such a
report on someone with concealed carry, I'll be the outcome could be pretty
bad.

~~~
confusedWizard
I feel like i'm missing part of the story. You reported a stolen license plate
and it got translated to a stolen car?

~~~
MichaelGG
I had two plates, and I guess one fell off or got stolen or something. So I
still had my back plate on. Since the PD never confirmed anything after the
online report, I figured I would have to go down and do it in person some
time. But apparently not.

Since there was zero confirmation, this means you can just do the same to
anyone. If the person is particularly jumpy, disabled, has mental issues, etc.
it could easily get serious.

------
Aloha
This is why some states have chosen to go with a single PSAP for the whole
state - Cellular E911 has a couple problems, one - the geolocation features of
cell phones is best effort, and if it fails, the best the company can do is
guess from which site/sector the call is coming in on to route them to the
correct PSAP. Two - the cellular networks on whole are best effort, cellular
as a technology cannot be as reliable as a wireline hookup, period.

In the future, I believe the move to VoLTE will make E911 more reliable, as it
will enable more location data to be sent from the handset at the time of
call, but until then, the most reliable way to get geolocation data to a PSAP
is to use a landline, period, the landline telephone, is and will remain more
reliable, consistent and predictable than any of the technologies replacing
it.

As far as why the carrier couldnt be reached? likely calling the wrong place -
Sprint FWIW is and has been in the midst of a forklift network upgrade for a
couple years now, its just wrapping up now, but parts of the network have been
partially non-functional for hours or days at a time - I know however that
regular e911 drive testing is a part of test and turnup, and the planned
maintenance process for Sprint.

~~~
gsnedders
The UK has (essentially) one PSAP for the whole country (it's not actually —
there's a number spread across the country for reasons of redundancy, but call
allocations are done across the whole network).

It has a few interesting results — most notably, when giving a location, they
likely know nothing about it. If you say you're in "Central Park, Fakesville",
and it's a small park where you can see the whole thing from the entrance,
they will still ask you where about in the park you are — because they don't
know. People in high-stress situations can end up wasting time trying to
describe in gratuitous detail where they are, instead of just giving an answer
like, "it's small; they'll see".

I'm surprised that the situation wasn't handled better by the phones, though.
At least here, if a mobile can contact _any tower_ (regardless of network), an
emergency call can be placed through it without charge. I suppose if the
emergency line is already stagnated, trying again on a different network would
just make it worse. Hmm…

~~~
M2Ys4U
A month or two ago I had to call 999 to report a fire on my road. I gave the
names of my road and neighbourhood and the operator asked which town or city I
was in.

This threw me a little as I live in what is, arguably, the UK's second city
(Manchester) and assumed that the system would have at least identified that
much from the cell tower.

Still, the fire brigade responded within 5-10 minutes of me placing the call
and had the blaze under control little more than 10 minutes after that so I
guess the system works.

~~~
gsnedders
They almost certainly had it on the screen in front of them. They typically
ask for full details anyway, primarily to confirm. City often gets asked
separately to make sure the report gets to the right place.

------
Animats
911 for mobile is hard. Just routing to the right PSAP is tough. In the early
days of cellular, California originally routed all cellular 911 calls to the
California Highway Patrol, on the grounds that someone was probably calling
from a car. The CHP ended up running a sizable call center to redirect
emergency calls.

Only recently did most phones have GPS capability. Picking the PSAP based on
cell tower gets you to roughly the right place, but PSAPs have to have really
good handoff capability to nearby jurisdictions, and some of them don't.

All this is a separate issue from calling 911 and not getting any answer.
That's a serious carrier failure and should be treated as such.

------
F_J_H
Interesting - carriers need to _..track callers to within 50 meters
horizontally and 3 meters vertically_

This poses a problem in dense urban areas with high-rise buildings. The
private sector companies mentioned in the article who "zipping ahead" of
carriers can provide an altitude using things like wifi tracking, but that
still needs to be cross-referenced to an actual floor number. (Keep in mind
some buildings don't have a 13th floor, etc.) Barometers in phones don't work
well indoors either...

So, this may be a case where an FCC regulation is next to impossible to meet,
unless someone can figure out how to map altitudes to actual building floor
numbers at scale. Seems like that would be pretty labor intensive effort...

~~~
peeters
Where does the FCC regulation say you need to map it to a specific floor? The
carrier just has to say where the person is, not how to get to them. They
don't have to provide navigation directions to the EMS crew do they? Seems to
me like just giving an elevation and coordinates would be compliant.

~~~
F_J_H
They need to be accurate within 3 meters vertically, and telling a first
responder that a call came in from an area say 1000ft above sea level would
not be that helpful to him/her when standing in front of a 45 storey building,
wondering which floor they should go to.

So, it would seem knowing the floor number would be super helpful (though
maybe not a regulatory requirement as you say.)

~~~
gizmo686
Presumably, the first responder could could have an altimeter (or gps) and
know their own height.

~~~
F_J_H
Better, but still not going to be overly helpful. Call came from 1000ft, first
responder is standing at 750ft - there are 250ft of floors in between.

~~~
JshWright
So now we just need to carry blueprints for every building that tells us how
tall the floors are...

------
7402
I understand that it's a good idea keep the local (10-digit) numbers in your
phone for the police and fire departments where you live and work. See, for
example the San Francisco PD web site [http://www.sf-
police.org/index.aspx?page=38](http://www.sf-police.org/index.aspx?page=38)
which notes, "When calling 911 on a cellular phone near a highway, the call is
connected to The California Highway Patrol (CHP) dispatch center."

------
knowaveragejoe
_Leneweaver attempted to track down Sprint employees about the outage, but
couldn 't reach anyone at the company.

[...]

Two weeks later, Leneweaver got in touch with the company._

Erm, how is this okay?

~~~
thret
You really shouldn't be allowed to sell a phone - or collect revenue from a
phone - that isn't able to call 911.

------
alliejanoch
I have had this experience in Maryland in 2009. Luckily it wasn't a very
serious emergency in then end. There was a small explosion in our heater and I
smelled smoke, so I wanted the fire department to check it out. I called 911
repeatedly on my cell and repeatedly got a busy signal, finally I went back in
the house, got out my computer (before smart phones) and looked up the local
fire department number. After they arrived they asked me if I called 911, and
I said I couldn't get through and they said I needed to keep trying so they
had it for their records?!? The fact that they asked sort of implies that this
happens often (or maybe they just knew that I had called directly). It was a
weird experience, and turned out that I was lucky that the heater hadn't
completely exploded. I definitely don't think I will ever trust 911 again.

------
chaostheory
The title should be clearer: E911 is not 911. This is why we still have an
overpriced landline at my home.

------
jisaacks
I am on Sprint, would like to test my 9-1-1 coverage, but unsure how without
making a false 9-1-1 call.

~~~
anderiv
In setting up (and verifying) several VoIP E-911 systems and other PSTN phone
systems, I've made dozens of "test" calls without issue. When the dispatcher
answers, just tell them that you are testing 911 service and that you would
like to verify that you got connected to the correct dispatching center.

I've never had one of the dispatchers become upset at this - they want your
911 calls to succeed just as much as you do.

~~~
k-mcgrady
I can understand doing this as part of your job to test a system but isn't it
reckless for people to do it just to test their own phones? You're taking up
one of a limited number of phones lines for 10-20 seconds, potentially leaving
someone in a life threatening situation unable to get through in the only
10-20 seconds they have the opportunity to make the call in.

~~~
cbhl
If everyone did this at once, it might overwhelm the call center, but in
general a E911 call center needs to have far more capacity than there are
calls (or otherwise an urgent call might go unanswered).

My understanding is the key rules are:

1) wait for an operator and do not hang up (because if you hang up they assume
something bad happened and will send police/fire/etc to you), and,

2) tell them that it is a test call so that they can assess whether they can
spend time on you or should hang up to answer a more urgent call.

I'm sure kids call 911 enough as a prank that your test call won't have a
meaningful impact on call volume.

~~~
click170
In my area there were actually advertisements on the radio asking people to
use the lock function on their cellphone to prevent pocket-calls to 911 a few
years back. They claimed it had become a problem.

It leads me to wonder if your comment about capacity (which I assumed was the
case as well) does not apply evenly everywhere.

~~~
cbhl
Well, if you don't tell them it's a test call and you pocket dial, I would
hope that the 911 call center would assume that you're being held hostage and
send police/fire/etc. to you.

So, IMO, that the system isn't meant to handle this type of false alarm isn't
reflective of call center capacity but rather fire/police/ambulance capacity
(and also annoying everyone involved).

------
noir_lord
What about setting up the phones so that dialling 911/999 etc shows the
current GPS co-ordinates on the phone screen (on phones that GPS enabled).

That or even a button on the screen that will "read" them to the telephone
operator at the other end.

------
agarden
This looks like an opportunity for an app. Your phone has GPS and a better
idea of where you are than the cell network. What if you could open a 911 app,
tick a few check boxes (Is this a medical emergency? violent situation? Do you
require an ambulance, fire truck, and/or police?), and it would post your GPS
coordinates and your cell number. The local dispatch office would than
automatically call you and hook you up with a dispatcher who gets the details.

~~~
peeters
What is this theoretical app providing that isn't established within the first
10 seconds of a 911 call?

~~~
bronbron
It could be a much faster, nicer way to answer the question 'where are you?'

This is obviously anecdotal, but I've had to call 911 a couple times (I live
in NYC, things happen on the subway). Explaining where I am took up 75% of
those calls. They want very precise details and it's sometimes hard to answer
to the level of detail they want.

Example: I once had to call 911 when a woman fainted in the middle of the
platform. I spent (seriously) several minutes explaining my location to the
911 operator. I was waiting for a train that only has one platform - the train
goes east/west, and eastbound stops on the opposite side of the same platform
as the westbound. The 911 operator couldn't process this and kept asking me
whether I was on the westbound or the eastbound platform.

We wasted a few minutes going back and forth on this - which could've been
critical if the woman was in need of urgent medical care.

~~~
xanderstrike
It would also allow you to make a 911 "call" silently, which in some
(admittedly rare) circumstances would be a huge benefit.

------
elwell
The main image say "911, what's your emergency?", but in my experience they
have always intro'd with "911, where is your emergency?". I wonder if there
was a protocol change where they figured that the location was the most
important piece of information in case the phone call got cut short.

------
t-rex1
This is just crazy, the FCC keeping quiet is quite unbelievable.

~~~
MichaelGG
It's more sensationalist than crazy. The only worthwhile point is that the FCC
should get around to looking at the location accuracy requirements for indoor
usage.

But talking about the article, suppose there is a scheduled maintenance that
will affect service, and there's no way around it. What exactly should the
telco do? There's not a whole lot they _can_ do. Yeah, it's bad if the service
is unavailable, and generally, no one wants that to be the situation. But
somehow trynna make it out to some terrible secret is silly.

~~~
wtracy
Getting a fast busy signal when calling 911 when you _have service_ and can
reach normal numbers is a serious problem that needs to be resolved no matter
what angle you take.

For the other issues, agreed, there's only so much you can reasonably expect.

------
nacho_weekend
Fascinating, never thought about these implications before for network
carriers.

------
autism_hurts
This may be slightly off-topic, but it's also important.

911 is not there to help you. You need to know how to help yourself.

My story - Interstate 880 in the East Bay, Fremont, CA. Not a desolate stretch
of highway, not in the middle of nowhere (I mean, Fremont sucks but...)

I saw an SUV swerve and then roll in front of me on the highway. Took out 2
other cars as well. Slid on its roof about 50 feet then stopped. Gasoline,
debris, and fruit (it was carrying fruit?) strewn about the Freeway.

Tons of people pull over. Insanity.

The car is still running, and gas is pouring out of the SUV. A bystander and
myself get the passengers out. They're unconscious. I recognize the danger of
moving them, but the fire danger was very real.

Anyway, long story short -- guy goes into shock. Pisses himself, won't
respond.

15 people had called 911.

Elapsed time? 20 minutes.

Still not a single local PD, Firetruck, or CHP officer.

The first officer was DRIVING BY on the freeway and didn't know the accident
had even happened.

Imagine that was your wife, your son, your partner, your family.

We had a nurse stop and give care. We also had a contractor who had a box of
flares stop and close lanes for us. This was all citizens doing work.

Shortly after this incident, I bought a handgun. Because I knew when seconds
count, the police/fire/emt are MINUTES away.

(I also took medical course)

~~~
Animats
"The car is still running, and gas is pouring out of the SUV." ... "I bought a
handgun."

A fire extinguisher and a first aid kit in your car might be more useful.

~~~
gsnedders
It's worthwhile to note that in many places you are _legally obliged_ to have
both in your car.

~~~
gcb0
most us states are not those places.

