When To Call 9-1-1

Fond du Lac County’s Communications and Emergency Management Director urges those who have a legitimate emergency to call 9-1-1. Bobbi Hicken says she has heard from people who have called non-emergency numbers when they really should have called 9-1-1 given their situation. She says, “The biggest thing I get is ‘Well I, I wanted to report this but I didn’t want to call 9-1-1 so I was put on hold on a non-emergency line’ when truly they should have called 9-1-1.” Hicken points out another common mistake is people who assume dispatchers have all your information on where you are calling from. She explains that they do get that information from land lines and if you are using a cell phone outdoors or in a vehicle. She says, “That’s why we can find people on the lake, we can find accidents that kind of thing. But inside a home or a business or any kind of a building that GPS signal it isn’t an accurate thing at all and in fact there are no requirements for accuracy on that.” Hicken says if they have to do a little detective work on where they think you are, it will take longer for someone to get to that location.