Cellphones problematic for 911
Giving up land lines for cell phones may not mean a quick response from 9-1-1.
— -- Darlene Dukes struggled to speak as she called 911 from her cellphone. She could barely tell the operator her address: 602 Wales Drive.
The operator, trying to understand Dukes, sent an ambulance to Wells Street in Atlanta— 28 miles from Dukes' apartment in Johns Creek, a suburb north of the city.
Paramedics finally reached the stricken woman almost an hour after her call on Aug. 2, 2008. They were too late. Forty minutes after arriving at the hospital, Dukes, 39, the mother of two boys, died of a blood clot in her lungs.
That cellphone call was critical. If Dukes had called from a land-line telephone, her address would have immediately popped up on the 911 operator's screen, leaving no room for confusion.
Dukes' case is like many others across the nation. For the millions of Americans giving up their land lines in favor of cellphones, dialing 911 may no longer mean a quick response. It can lead to misrouted calls, delayed information about the location of the caller and, most important, a slower emergency response.
"Lots of people are dying each year," says David Aylward, director of Comcare Emergency Response Alliance, a non-profit advocacy group. "We're sending in responders where they don't know information about the person they are responding to. We're sending them in looking for someone when they should know where they are exactly."
911 built for land lines
The nation's 911 emergency response system, built in 1967, was based on the expectation that calls for help would come from land-line telephones, says Paul Linnee, a consultant for emergency communications. Now, with more people using cellphones exclusively, calls that bounce from tower to tower pose significant challenges.
Cellphone users "almost assume that they are going to be located — and that's not a fair assumption," says Brian Fontes, CEO of the National Emergency Number Association (NENA), which focuses on 911 emergency communications.
Related Stories
ABC News Live