National 911 Day

[Guest guest]

Hi everyone,

We got the same thing for 911 day as we did for telecommunicator week. the

following article was written by the Supervisor in the next town over from

us. I figured i would post it, i found it to be a pretty good article. If

anyone wants to go to the web site of the newspaper i will post it at the end

of the article.

On 9/11, a plea for responsible, respectful use of 911 emergency line

By PATRICK COOK

Special to The Sun

As you sit there reading this column, somewhere a man or woman has just

answered a telephone and is in the middle of a conversation that will likely

help save a life.

How do I know this? Because in one way or another, lives are saved over the

telephone every day, from the smallest of towns to the largest of cities.

People need help. They want to see a police officer, a firefighter, or

medical personnel at their door, and they want to see them right away.

And how do they get that help? By dialing the universally recognized number

for emergencies: 911.

Take a look at your calendars today and note the date: Sept. 11. Or, as it

would appear in its abbreviated form, 9/11. Seizing the date, leaders in

public safety communications throughout this country have begun officially

recognizing Sept. 11 as 911 Day.

Today is gradually evolving into a date to recognize the men and women who

staff public safety communications centers across America.

It's also a day that we in public safety can use to ramp up our public

education about 911.

So with that in mind, here's a quick, and by no means all-inclusive, list of

when not to call 911. Think they sound silly? Guess what: Each of these

examples is based on an actual call that dispatchers have received in the

Lowell Police and Fire Communications Center, which processes more than

30,000 911 calls a year:

* Do NOT call 911 when you can't find your TV remote.

* Do NOT call 911 because your wife won't cook you spaghetti.

* Do NOT call 911 if you want the name of a good baby sitter in the area.

* Do NOT call 911, swear at the dispatcher, and then hang up. (Do that and

it's a sure bet you'll see a police officer at your front door, if not the

dispatcher.)

* Do NOT call 911 and ask to have a police officer or firefighter come over

to help you clean your apartment.

* Do NOT call 911 because you'd like a police officer to go pick up a pack of

cigarettes for you.

* Do NOT call 911 to see if you're supposed to set your clock ahead, or back,

for Daylight Savings Time.

* Do NOT call 911 for a ride to the dentist.

* Do NOT call 911 because you have a blister on your heel or a rash under

your arm.

* Do NOT call 911 because you can't sleep.

So why should you call 911? For three reasons, and three reasons only: To

save a life, to stop a crime in progress, or to report a fire. And that's it.

It's my hope that parents will use this column to help educate children, who

either accidentally, or intentionally, are the worst abusers of 911. Many

young children hit the automatic dial buttons programmed into your telephone.

Others do it for the curiosity factor to see what will happen when they dial

the number that society has taught them will get them help right away.

Young children don't understand the ramifications of tying up emergency lines

and personnel with bogus calls. That's where the parents come in. Parents and

teachers need to have conversations with their kids to teach them the value

of 911 and the dangers in abusing it.

In Lowell, dispatchers are more than happy to visit the schools, especially

the younger classes, to teach them about 911. Teachers interested in lining

up a visit from dispatchers can contact my office at .

Educational coloring books, magnets, stickers, and posters are available, but

we've found it's face-to-face conversations with dispatchers that really

provide the most valuable education.

I would be remiss if I didn't make note of those dispatchers, the men and

women whose job is to not only answer that phone when the 911 lines ring, but

to make sure they've dispatched the kind of help you need in the event of an

emergency. These are the people to whom we entrust your lives. When pressed

into service, they're counselors, advisors, sympathetic ears, and sometimes,

it seems, magicians.

Should you ever have to call 911, listen carefully to the person on the other

end of the phone. He or she has received special training to help you through

virtually any type of emergency.

So this column and more importantly, today, is for all the dispatchers out

there. The men and women who've spent a seeming eternity (actually, only

minutes) on the telephone, trying desperately to talk someone through CPR

only to find out that the person he or she was trying to help on the other

end of the phone didn't make it.

911 Day is for the dispatchers who field the hundreds of calls asking what

time the fireworks start. For the dispatchers whose dinners go cold because

they weren't able to eat before the next crisis broke out. For the

dispatchers who helped locate your missing son or daughter.

For the men and women on the phones at 911 who, when called upon, can mean

the difference between life and death.

Cook, a former Sun reporter, is supervisor of the Lowell Police and

Fire Communications Center.

http://www.lowellsun.com

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--

M. Goldman

Pelham Police Dept.

D-45

http://www.pelham-nh.com/police

" These are my opinions and may not be reproduced without my express written

permission "