Abusing the 911 System Could Be Deadly -- Even for You!

When I teach my CPR and first aid classes, I usually like to start out by explaining to the students that the 911 system is not perfect. This might come as a surprise to many of you.

Why isn't it perfect? Well, let me list a few things. For one, emergency responders can get lost. There was one incident where two brand new Emergency Medical Technicians (EMT) in my old company took 20 minutes to respond to a 911 call because neither one of them knew their way around town. There were times where my partners and I got lost because either one of us was confused with the directions or the address wasn't clear enough. There was one time when my partner had to stop and ask for directions because one particular address almost seemed as if it didn't exist.

Emergency responders do break down. One time while responding to a 911 call, the sirens blew out! It was a brand new ambulance too, and already something happened to it! Go figure! There was another time where I almost got into an accident because the brakes on the ambulance almost gave out and we nearly rear-ended someone. Another time when I was responding to a call, we hit someone else's car because that person failed to yield to us. We ended up pulling to the side instead of going to the call, even though the accident was very minor with no injuries.

The ambulances that my company had weren't very reliable due to poor maintenance. We would have a parking lot full of ambulances and only four of them would be any good. In fact, the ambulances were so bad that each of them were known for a particular problem. In the mornings when EMT's were assigned their buses (we also called ambulances buses), it wasn't uncommon to hear people say, "Ah crap, I got Bus 33," or "Can I get another bus," or "You wanna trade buses?"