Public Service Announcement – You may need to call 911 on behalf of someone else – look it up ahead of time

Let’s imagine the following scenario: You are talking on the phone with your elderly parent or grandparent in another state. Suddenly you hear the sound of gasping, and then the line goes silent. You call out and get no response. Now what?

Or even worse, imagine being caught in this situation:

Boyfriend watches on webcam as girlfriend murdered 11,000 miles away

A student was murdered in her bedroom in Canada as she chatted to her boyfriend on webcam, who watched, powerless, as the attack unfolded.

Qian Liu, 23, from Beijing was seen struggling with a man who entered her room at York University Village in Toronto as she spoke via live webcam to her boyfriend 11,000 miles away in China.

What would you do? Dialing 911 may not help – 911 is designed to help you in your current location, not someone else in a remote location. They might be able to route you, or they might not, depending on the 911 service you call and how busy it is at the moment you dial in.

A better option, especially in the case of an elderly parent or a significant other in a far-away city, is to do a little research ahead of time so that you can call for help on behalf of someone else if you ever need to.

Let’s say that your elderly parent or long-distance significant other is living in Poughkeepsie, NY. What you need to do ahead of time is find out either the number for the police station there, or the number for the 911 Public Safety Access Point (PSAP) for Poughkeepsie (if you can get it). The PSAP is the place where all 911 calls in any locale are routed. Then in an emergency you would call the number and could get help almost immediately.

If you were to hear/see someone in distress at a remote location, and if you know his/her address, but if you had not done any preparation, possibly the quickest thing to do would be to dial 411. You can get the number of the police station in that locale and call the police. The boyfriend in the previous example apparently did not do that, so: “Police only arrived at the scene ten hours later to find her semi-naked body.”

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