Many of you
may have seen that WCCCA, Washington County 9-1-1 is starting a campaign on “You Called 911 for That?!” where they are posting the most
crazy call of the week on their Facebook page and Twitter account.
9-1-1 does receive
nuisance calls on a daily basis and I’m sure CRESA could add more than a few to
the list. In fact, the Canadian “Vancouver” to our north recently posted a list
of the top 10 most absurd 9-1-1 calls.
Within the
social media comments on KGW-TV; however, CRESA noticed an important question
about why CRESA does not currently have a non-emergency number for the public
to call. That is an excellent question and
the answer has a lot to do with technology.
Unlike the 911 lines, our current phone system does not provide caller
name, address or call back number on our business lines. Because we feel it is important to have that
information no matter if it’s an emergency or non-emergency and because the
same people who answer our 911 lines would also be answering our non-emergency
line, we have chosen to have all calls for police, fire and medical come in on
our 9-1-1 lines.
We acknowledge
this is not a perfect plan and we intend on establishing a non-emergency number
with the replacement of our telephone system sometime later this year. With our new system we expect to have a
non-emergency line for our citizens to call that will provide caller ID. As we work on this very important project we
will keep our community informed.
What is
important to know right now is that, when there are multiple simultaneous 911
calls, the very first question you may hear in Clark County is “Is This an in-progress
Emergency?” If you do not have an
emergency, say “no” immediately. This
allows us to triage the call so that emergency calls are prioritized over
non-emergency calls. If you are calling
about a non-emergency and we have other 911 calls, you may be placed on-hold
until all emergency calls have been taken.
CRESA is
always looking for creative ways to educate and inform people about our 9-1-1
services. If you have ideas on how to
positively get these messages across, please let us know. We are stronger and
smarter and better together!
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