E-Comm, the largest 911 call centre in B.C., handles more than 1.3 million calls every year, most of them involving emergencies and life-threatening situations.
But sometimes, E-Comm says people call 911 when it isn’t an emergency and that ties up a 911 phone line, putting lives at risk.
On Thursday, E-Comm has released its top ten list of 2016 with examples of calls that unnecessarily tied-up emergency lines.
- Requesting help opening a broken gym locker
- Enquiring about job opportunities for a family member interested in police work
- Because an electric shaver would not turn off
- Requesting a ladder to get a soccer ball off the roof
- How best to get a drone down from a tree
- Tired of waiting in traffic
- “There’s a big spider in the bathroom”
- Complaining they couldn’t get into a nightclub
- Because their teenager refused to do chores
- “Can you tell me what time it is?”
Call-takers Jim Beland and Chris Faris took the top two 911 nuisance calls of the year.
“I’d like to be able to say that calls such as the ones on our top ten list are rare, but unfortunately this isn’t the case,” said Beland in a release. “As call-takers our job is to treat each call like an emergency until we can determine otherwise, and this takes time. We want our time reserved for people who need help because they have a legitimate emergency.”
Chris Faris agreed, saying “unfortunately, we do get a lot of people who call 9-1-1 thinking it can be used as an information hotline. We get a lot of calls that start off with ‘this is not an emergency but…’ and that’s a concern when we know there are other people out there who need our help.”
To learn more about when to call 9-1-1 visit ecomm911.ca—resources include non-emergency numbers for police, fire and ambulance, and free education materials available for order.