I've sort of had the opposite experience. I made a 999 (UK) call for a traffic accident - head on collision, one person dead at the scene, another died later, devastating scene on a winter's night with just what car lights were left, a horn stuck blaring and quite a bit of smoke in the air.
I was at my home and heard it. Ran to a few hundred metres away and as I got there a nurse arrived too who by chance was driving that way. I made the call because I was pretty certain she'd handle the carnage better than I could.
They answered and I explained there had been a head on car crash, the next question was Police, Fire or Ambulance? Which threw me a bit, I don't care who you send that can deal with this! I think I said Ambulance and then they sent all three anyway.
They then asked what road I was on, it was a minor road and I couldn't remember the road name so I was trying to describe where it went from and to and how far along it was. The person answering the call seemed not to know the place names I was giving, my brain was working overtime trying to find references.
It wasn't until the next day that I realised I should've just given my home address and they'd have found us easily.
I had a similar experience when making a much less serious 999 call for a drunk dude we found passed out in the middle of a car park, it was only after I hung up that I noticed Google have some sort of feature which knew I was making a 999 call and was offering me information about my current location on screen - had no idea they did that though so didn't think to look at my phone screen...
> the next question was Police, Fire or Ambulance?
In the Netherlands I hade the same experience with my only call. I still get angry I had to make that decision. In fact I am pretty sure I got it wrong. In the end no one came and 4 hours later I got a call asking whether I still needed help.
Thank god things had calmed down at that point, but that was pretty much luck. Had I made the right choice between police, ambulance or firefighters, a lot less luck would have been needed.
In many cases when they’ve asked me that the next step was a quick transfer to the local police precinct dispatch or the local fire/medical dispatch. Dunnno what they do when they need to dispatch all of the above though...
I was at my home and heard it. Ran to a few hundred metres away and as I got there a nurse arrived too who by chance was driving that way. I made the call because I was pretty certain she'd handle the carnage better than I could.
They answered and I explained there had been a head on car crash, the next question was Police, Fire or Ambulance? Which threw me a bit, I don't care who you send that can deal with this! I think I said Ambulance and then they sent all three anyway.
They then asked what road I was on, it was a minor road and I couldn't remember the road name so I was trying to describe where it went from and to and how far along it was. The person answering the call seemed not to know the place names I was giving, my brain was working overtime trying to find references.
It wasn't until the next day that I realised I should've just given my home address and they'd have found us easily.