Need 911 and can’t talk? Soon you’ll be able to get police and fire another way
Mobile-phone users in Whatcom County will soon be able to text 911, but police and fire officials are hoping that it will be used only by people who can’t contact their emergency call centers any other way.
Text to 911, or “next-generation 911,” is growing across the nation and it’s especially helpful for deaf or hard-of-hearing people, speech-disabled people, people who can’t talk because of a medical emergency, or for someone hiding from a burglar or abuser.
“Voice communication with 911 will always be the quickest and clearest means of communication,” said Greg Erickson, deputy director of What-Comm, the 911 dispatch center.
“(But) this will be a significant improvement for the deaf and hard-of-hearing community,” Erickson told The Bellingham Herald in an email.
Erickson said the text-to-911 service will begin before the end of the year, and its cost will be negligible.
Bellingham Police Chief David Doll told the City Council about the new program in an Oct. 5 presentation.
“This paves the way for our dispatch center to receive text messages and in the future, images and videos from the public,” Doll said. “This has been years in the making and provides another avenue of essential communications especially for those who may be in danger and unable to speak on the telephone.”
Erickson said What-Comm plans to “soft” test the technology and train staff, and then activate the system without a public announcement.
“This will give us a period of time to practice and work out the bugs,” Erickson said. “Once we are confident in the system we will make a public announcement and provide public education on the proper use of text to 911.”
A 911 phone call is the best way to communicate because it’s quicker and dispatchers can consider the caller’s tone of voice and background noise such as a crowd or gunfire, according to the Federal Communications Commission.
Further, a typical 911 call takes one minute and 45 seconds for a dispatcher to process, while a text message takes five to seven minutes, Erickson said.
“Clarity is also an issue with text to 911,” Erickson said. “Written conversation can often be interpreted in more than one way and typos can change meaning. The dispatcher cannot hear voice inflection or background sounds during a text conversation. With voice conversations, our dispatchers can quickly ask clarifying questions to make sure they have a correct understanding of the callers’ situation. Asking clarifying questions via text can be a lengthy process.”
This story was originally published October 19, 2020 at 6:00 AM.
