Strangest 9-1-1 Calls (Reddit Compilation)

911 operators of reddit what's the strangest serious emergency you've heard i answered the phone and gave my usual 911. do you need police fire or ambulance and the person on the other end just started screaming the eeries beers i assumed that the bees were neither mugging him nor on fire so i put it through to ambulance because what the frick even comma i assumed that the bees were neither mugging him nor on fire so i put it through to ambulance because what the frick even and now there is coffee all over my desk and my supervisor is looking at me weirdly take your upvote had a dude who called in on thanksgiving because my wife is chasing me around the house with a knife because i called her bird dry also had a guy shoot somebody while on the phone with me also had a guy get arrested while on the phone with me i don't miss those days the emergency itself wasn't particularly strange vaginal bleeding during pregnancy nor was the call mine but in training i listened to a call that contained the following exchange so she's bleeding now yep where is she bleeding from from her bottom part which bottom part sir i need you to be specific her rectum front part her weight what says she bleeding from her rectum or from the front god dang it she's bleeding from her pee hole i think it's impossible to read that last line without a heavy southern accent 911 what's your emergency there's a pig in the road a big one so where are you at the stoplight it's the biggest dang pig i have ever seen get someone here now one stoplight town the bar is near the intersection how big is the pig about the size of a volkswagen how much have you had to drink i'm not freaking drunk it's a giant pig the size of a small car what is wrong with you people officers show up to find a full-grown hippo that had escaped from the local wild animal park big freaking pig eater this was at 2 30 a.m when the bars close lots of calls from elderly people hallucinating because of a ut one woman had been following cpr instructions and when the crew arrived she was doing very gentle chest compressions on her slightly confused but very much alive cat we had a lady who would call all the time about people in her yard or on her house usually doing nasty things always a false alarm this lady had been calling since way before i got my job and even now after i've switched agencies she's probably still calling she's mental but not a danger to herself or others so no real need to commit her involuntarily well one day we get a call from her about a man at her house causing the troubles for her my supervisor who had answered the call finally got fed up and asked to speak to the man to everyone's surprise the woman handed the phone over to the man and there was someone there it was her brother he was there trying to get her committed we ended up i believe asking him to leave the property because he couldn't have her committed against her will at that time just goes to show you that crazy doesn't always mean wrong a family member was working in an emergency room and said the following case came in about a month ago a guy got high on pcp suddenly thinks um i'm a bit hungry and would like to have some eggs proceeds to cut out one of his testicles and fry it in a frying pan his girlfriend walks in while he's doing that and goes what the heck at which point he's like oh whoops sorry and tries to put his fried testicle back in his scrotum then he was in the hospital i don't know the result but i can guess this made my balls shrivel up into my body and i'm a female jesus i've got one for you the obligatory not 9-1-1 but it'll tie together so i worked for an alarm monitoring company i get an inbound call in the middle of the night from somewhere in philadelphia guy on the line sounds real out of it drunk maybe my first thought was it was someone calling him to cancel a false alarm messed up voice was then waking from sleep not uncommon some alarms hair start going off in my head the guy isn't making a whole lot of sense and it's really hard to get basic information out of him eventually i piece together that he's a gas station worker and he's been shot for some reason he dialed the alarm company instead of 9-1-1 we weren't even his alarm company there was probably an old sticker in the shop somewhere so i've got no info on this guy mind you we don't have any magical reverse phone lookup system and our systems are locked down such that we can't access a web browser genius i know pulled out my phone also not allowed managed to look up a gas station with the inbound number in philly called 911 and got police and medical out there no idea how it ultimately shook out stayed on the line keeping the guy conscious and talking until they got there then disconnected my sister is an emt in a small rural college town apparently there have been more than one calls about horses collapsing and hurting their rider handler broken arms legs trapped under horse etc when she was new to it someone just described it as a collapsed horse and she thought that they were supposed to treat the horse's condition i'm close to an area where equestrian stuff is pretty popular when i was a medical student on trauma i was surprised we had like four horse-related injuries on service at the same time apparently it isn't that unusual here heard this one the other day not from the perspective of an operator but close ms responds to a call where a man reported having multiple potatoes stuck up his rectum colon not red potatoes those big brown suckers the kicker i was washing my potatoes in the shower when i slipped and fell and all the potatoes went up there what i wouldn't even try to say i fell on it i know nobody would believe me and i'd look like a bigger idiot i just own it and the dispatchers would probably make just a little less fun with me behind my back my mom was a dispatcher for 20-plus years the eerie school she ever told me about was one that started off with no voice only breathing she kept asking yes or no questions working out a system to guess what was going on eventually he could talk a little bit and said the person who hurt him was still there so the officers went in guns drawn he'd said the person was there but hadn't specified that they were dead turns out the guy couldn't talk because his throat was sliced open which he had done to himself to make it look like his wife whom he had just murdered had attacked him first i got dispatched for neck pain get there find out a couple were having sex on a couch when the female heard a large pop in her head followed by splitting headache and nausea we transport and after a ct scan find that she somehow developed a tear in her arachnoid meningeal tissue serious crap but humorous and odd ro he almost literally freaked her brains out not sure if that makes him a legend or a monster lol i once dispatched a helicopter for a woman gored by a reindeer apparently there is a reindeer farm for tourists and she tried to kiss it my pilot and flight crew laughed at the moi and asked three times to repeat i responded to a man in his whitey tighties standing on the yellow lines in the middle of the road arrived on scene to find this to be true the reason he was in the middle of the road was to practice his karate moves on cars dispatch was even having a hard time keeping from laughing the very first emergency call i took by myself during training trainer was hooked into my phone and could jump in whenever i answered a 9-1-1 while my trainer was trying to grab a cup of coffee from the machine long cords and as soon as the phone connected there was what sounded like an explosion and people screaming all over the place scared the jesus out of my trainer who sprinted back to the desk thinking i had just picked up some huge disaster or accident takes over the call starts asking questions and it turns out what we heard was just rushing water from a hot water heater that ruptured and were spewing water all over these two girls apartments and they were freaking out not knowing what to do about it bonus story had a similar call a few year later picked up to a bunch of people being loud sounding panicked talking about someone being locked in a car thought it was a child locked in a car a very high priority call for my agency due to being in florida and a few recent deaths so i put the call in as urgent while trying to get anyone on the phone to actually talk to me but then i hear a door open and someone in the background scream it's out the chicken is free phone disconnects florida comma florida say no more the first call i took was from a blind elderly male he called because he had found his son on the floor of her bedroom he was not responding so i had him tilt his head back and listen for a breath nothing he said he was warm and he had talked with him less than 20 minutes prior so i guided him through cpr compressions only because of the circumstances he lived in a rural part of our county and we were low on rigs so we did this for about 12 minutes before help arrived on scene ems goes inside and immediately asks for pd this isn't unusual sometimes loved ones can't or don't want to believe that it's too late so we go through the motions until a trained eye is there pd gets there and asks for a detective this is also not unusual for younger deaths two hours later and still there it peaks my curiosity i called the first officer that arrived and found out that the poor man had been doing cpr on his now mostly headless son he had been taking a nap and his son committed suicide with a shotgun it woke him up but not quick enough for it to register as a gunshot when i had asked him to tilt his head back he did so by using his chin which was still there i think it worked out for the best because he had support though when he learned the truth and it didn't make my job any tougher but it definitely made for an usual start to my dispatch career obligatory not 911 operator i'm the son of the caller my dad called 9-1-1 late one night to report hitting a six-foot tall chicken while driving and running off into the ditch he had just crashed his car and his voice was a bit shaky on the phone so the operator asked him to repeat himself a couple of times and then promised to send someone to help the first cop on scene got out of his car with a breathalyzer in hand by the time he got to the back of my dad's car he was laughing hysterically over his radio telling people that it wasn't a dui call my dad actually did hit a six foot tall chicken and that's the story about the night my dad and all the local cops learned about emu farming i think i'd be panicking just as much it's one thing to hit a normal animal another to run over a dang emu not me [ __ ] my dad works in an emergency room and one time he had to treat someone who had been attacked by an owl the owl was unconscious on the side of the road and she thought it was dead because she didn't want the children on the school bus to see the dead owl she decided the best course of action would be to put the owl in the back of her car unfortunately the owl wasn't dead it woke up and attacked her like the deer in tommy boy okay so my friend is a former 9-1-1 operator and she told me that she got this call from what sounded like an old man b was telling her that it's been a while and that she should come back over like hey it's been so long i miss you do you still remember the address 123 street remember she assumed that he was just senile or something turns out he had someone in his house and he didn't want them to know he was calling 911. we got a call from a woman having severe abdominal pains simple enough we asked the normal questions are you feeling faint are you vomiting blood stuff like that then we asked if it was traumatic or not well she eventually tells us that she had a tampon stuck inside of her for more than 20 days and she thinks that might be why she's hurting thanks for telling me that second story i'm gonna go throw up now not me but my cousin she had this lady who would call regularly and often make up stories most likely due to loneliness but they still had to send someone out every time so one day when they got a call from her they figured it would be another one of those calls cousin 911 what's your emergency her there's a lion in my living room cousin there's a lion in your living room what's it doing her pauses to ask it what it was doing i don't know just standing there can you send someone over turned out there actually was a lion cub in her living room that had escaped from a circus or something nearby she's the real life boy who cried wolf story except she still had a response in the end obligatory not a 9-1-1 operator but my soon-to-be mother-in-law she got a call that a guy and his roommate were doing drugs h and the caller's friend overdosed so this absolute mensa hooks up a couple wires to the inside of a toaster turns the toaster on and attaches the wires to his unconscious friend's testicles honestly not sure if it successfully electrocuted the unconscious guy but the caller definitely seemed to think it would wake his friend up my mother-in-law's response so please don't do that again at first i was thinking somehow he was going to miraculously use it as some sort of defibrillator to revive him but the story turned quickly i still give it a 10 stroke 10. woman screaming that her drug addict partner had been bitten by her vimarana dog she was going on about how he loved the dog and the dog was lovely normally but her partner's finger was bleeding when the crew got there they reported back to the control room that the man's arm had been de-gloved from the elbow down yikes got a call from some girl saying someone stole my car i asked if she saw what direction they went she says they're heading down the street and starts telling me the stores they're passing i ask if she's following them she says that she is in the car i freak the frick out she then says to whoever is driving babe slow down this is crazy turns out she and her boyfriend were arguing he started driving crazy since he was mad and she decided to call it as a stolen vehicle another story we get a call that there's two loose dogs running around a major street about 30 seconds later an officer comes over the radio to tell me that they just hit two dogs on the street same dogs that's just a couple of minor stories i could think of i'll post more as i think of them 9-1-1 operators should have a million crazy stories i only did it for four months was a 9-1-1 op for five years had a female call screaming he's stabbing me he's stabbing me she's get away from her husband who's going at her over and over with an ice pick it becomes evident to me that she's moving around the house in an attempt to get away i'm telling her can you barricade yourself can you get away from him can you get out of the house she told me that she's trying in that interjects that her husband is blind now i'm really confused she's not giving me much information typical with panicky victims in the heat of a crime and i'm trying to figure out how she can't get away from a blind person she gets quiet and i can hear him saying all kinds of nasty things about her cops get there secure the scene and they fly her to her trauma center she lived still we were all standing around after so confused that this woman couldn't escape a blind man from stabbing her i've lived with a blind person they can't move with a confidence that would surprise the heck out of you when they need to in a highly familiar environment anyhow one ultra calm caller girlfriend is having a fit me does she have any weapons him just the eggs throwing at me me what is she wearing him underwear too took a call for a hostage situation in a cab once the driver was talking to me but trying not to make it obvious passenger implied a weapon and wanted him to drive to the middle of nowhere so that he could kill him and the lady in the front seat the driver ended up crashing into another car to cause a distraction three screaming lady caller he's throwing the car thing at me it was a hubcap four he flushed my weed so i poured his beer out and we bout to throw down five guy found his pet cat's head sitting upright on the table on his front porch nobody called back later someone had placed the body in his car one reminds me of a call i dispatched for where the subject was hitting people with a sub from subway one of my proudest moments was updating the units in route that their subject was armed with a sandwich in the most serious tone possible of course it was my call to 9-1-1 but something tells me they've relayed this story from their perspective a few times i got hit from behind by one of my 220-pound suffolk ram sheep never saw it coming knocked the snot out of me barely escaped as he was trying to finish me off once outside the fence i went into shock as all the adrenaline drained had to call nine one one overheard the emt in the ambulance trying to clarify to the er that the patient they were transporting was not a victim of pedestrian versus truck the hospital thought i'd been hit by a dodge ram pickup my friend in the year told me how someone passed out on an escalator and his hand was running into the grate where the top of the escalator meets the floor for half an hour before someone found him his hand was pretty messed up from what i heard thank you for giving me a reason not to sleep for weeks that's one dream i don't need one jogger found drunk male passed out in the bushes with his pants around his ankles he was apparently robbed of his wallet but the thief was considerate enough to leave a single debit card wedge between and sticking out of victim's buttocks we called the poor bastard swipe atm for weeks two couple having sex in hotel room female falls off the bed and lands on a champagne flute breaking it at the stem puncturing through the side of her groin and hitting a femoral artery she bled out and died i was a zero operator not 9-1-1 but many small towns didn't have 9-1-1 so i got quite a few emergency calls i got a call from a 13 year old girl once that had just gotten home from school she couldn't find her father but there was an ominous note there that she had read to me i had police on the way and told her to wait outside for them rather i heard her walking around her house going from room to room opening doors looking for him after about a minute she let out a blood curdling scream yelling he's here he's here he's here he was hanging dead in the garage was a terrible call i got a 15 minute break and had to get back on the board taking calls again it's been almost 20 years and i can still hear her voice strangest call kid who felt experimenty and lost an adult toy up his ass wasn't anything i could do but transport to the air and try not to laugh most serious call milk truck t-boned an amish buggy going about 60 miles per hour the buggy was in the wrong it annihilated the buggy and i don't remember for sure but i'm pretty sure the occupants inside did not survive i remember they got flown to the air with massive trauma but it was like 2007 to 2009-ish been an emt for over 12 years now going on 13. i feel old lol pretty sure i'm going to move back to volunteering soon i sometimes drive in amish country and they always scare the heck out of me a friend of the family was potentially still is a paramedic with the helicopter service here i'm not sure if this was when he was a ground-based or in the helicopter but he enjoyed this story he was called out to a head trauma incident and arrived to find a man sitting in his living room acting very normal for a call like that so he asked what was wrong and the man said well i've got this here and turned to show a screwdriver buried to the hilt in his head so the paramedic obviously said something along the lines of how that isn't good and the man said nah it's all right and began turning the screwdriver they told him to stop i had a professor who exploded a cat with a shotgun in an attempt to get it out of a tree and another who made his partner pass out by having a girl show him her eyeball that hadn't popped out after a car accident that first story made me cringe like now 911 operators of reddit what was the most petty call you have ever received once got a call about a stolen matchbook from the caller's front porch ashtray and cigarettes were left untouched caller was so worked up and concerned about a prowler that i sent an officer over matches were located in the garden where they had fallen over the railing caller immediately demanded the officer leave the property no police were called in this case but a relative of mine was 100 convinced the hotel maid had stolen a perthsized pack of tissues from her the good four ply kind tissues were later found under a towel i don't know what it is about some people that their mind goes immediately to theft obligatory not a dispatcher but my hometown received national attention when a woman rang 999 because her snowman had been stolen from her garden an actual snowman not a ceramic garden decoration a facsimile of a man made out of fallen snow the word someone's nicked ma snowman haunt me i like to imagine this happen towards the end of winter and the rest of the call was her frantically realizing that someone had stolen all the snow off the ground too 9-1-1 operator here honestly 90 of what we deal with is petty things that i would never think to call nine one one four people are calling my brother threw a tube sock at me my neighbor is mowing his lawn he's doing it to annoy me it's 11am on a saturday morning my son brought his girlfriend over i don't like her can you remove her from the house mom is she being threatening or violent in any way no i just don't like her those are some of the more memorable from the past week or so honestly if it's something you're interested in see if your local 9-1-1 dispatch center will allow you to sit with a dispatcher it'll be enlightening to what we really have to deal with couple things the son and girlfriend situation son is a legal tenant resident and invited the girlfriend over this complicates the whole trespassing thing owner of the property is usually irrelevant in all three situations a good dispatcher will still put in a call for liability reasons if any of those escalate i need to show that i did everything i could if the field decides they don't want to go that's up to them but a call for service should be put in for all of those regardless of how ridiculous it is a throne tube sock could still be considered assault a lot of people seemed interested in sitting with a dispatcher in a 911 centers will allow this some won't if it's something you're interested call your local police department and just ask you can say you're interested in what goes on and would like to sit with a dispatcher different departments have different procedures for this likely they'll get you in touch with someone who will take your information and find out what days times work best a simple background check will usually be performed mainly to see if you have any active warrant or anything else that might be of concern once that's done they'll tell you when you can come in tell you where to go and what to do when you get there most dispatchers enjoy having the public sit with them because it doesn't happen too often and they like showing people what the job is really like for the son and girlfriend thing the parent should be doing you know parenting not making the police do it kick them out if you don't like them not dispatch but emt worst call in this regard we ever had my partner and i show up in the morning to find out we have a trainee on our shift first ride out during his emt school cool nice kid about two hours later we get paid out for prostate problems no further information all right fun we show up at an assisted care facility not full nursing home think more apartments that have a nurse on staff make contact with patient i send the student to do vitals while i start questioning him is he having pain discomfort more urine output less urine output funny feelings on urination discharges anything all negative finally i tell him i need some help why does he think he is having prostate problems well it's saturday morning and he just watched a medical show that mentioned it's important that men his age get their prostate checked once a year and it had been about 15 months since he had a prostate exam and he called his primary care physician and couldn't get an appointment until monday morning in over five years of ms this is one of like three patients i ever tried to talk out of going to the hospital but he wanted transport so we did we radio the hospital ahead when bringing in a patient this is the only time i ever said in front of the patient i'm sorry for what i am about to tell you we get to the hospital and as we are moving the patient into a bed this older male nurse storms into the room and starts laying into me why he thought i was joking when i called in the report when i assured him that it was legit he turned to the patient i can't remember his exact words but it was something like this you actually called a mother freaking ambulance to bring your sorry butt into the emergency room for a freaking prostate exam that you couldn't wait two days for the patient looked stunned but nodded the nurse turned to the tech that had entered the room get his freaking butthole a prostate exam and get him the frick out of my he then slammed down clipboard he was holding on the counter as we were cleaning the ambulance my trainee looked at me is it always like this he asked hope dying in his eyes i clapped him on the shoulder welcome to ems county your 911 my neighbor is mowing his yard in pajamas and i don't think that's very necessary excuse me mom is he threatening you or harming you no but he's nearly nude mowing his yard can you get a cop here to tell him to put clothes on how about i'll let an officer give you a call about it mom sure that'll be fine i'm tired of seeing old shirtless men mowing their yards early morning my number is blah blah blah okay i'll give this to the officer directly hangs up me on the radio county 9-1-1 to north county 939 go ahead have some telephone traffic regarding a shirtless old man mowing his yard sub is requesting you to give her a call sensible laugh over radio sure thing i am ready to copy give him her number five minutes later 939 to county 9-1-1 go ahead it's gonna be a civil matter she told me she's going to start mowing her yard naked i'll be 10 8 me in tears of laughter 10 4 14 32 our cat is being updated and this happened when i couldn't send texts over the cad software itself otherwise i would have just thrown the comment in the narrative and he could have read it fun times that that's amazing lol not a 911 operator but i do mapping for an operator 911 a call once from someone that was extremely concerned that emergency services wouldn't be able to find his house if he ever needed them not a reason to call the emergency number but still a valid concern the call gets kicked over to me and i'm on the phone with him going through a checklist to verify the location of his address i asked him a few times what prompted his concerns about emergency services not being able to find his house and he just mumbles something like i just know they won't i eventually get things worked out his address is in our system and in the correct location and i assure him that we will be able to find his house there's a few seconds of silence on his end then he says well if the police know where i live and can get here why the frick couldn't pizza hut find my house last night he hung up before i could respond that's actually surprisingly rational i remember hearing an audio recording on tv when david cameron was still prime minister of the uk but some old woman actually phoned 999 to ask the police operator to tell david cameron that he was doing a great job the understandably irritated operator told the woman that the line was for emergency use only to which the old woman responded by asking the operator if she could get her a contact number for the prime minister the british ones win me up rather than make me laugh cause i can imagine the thick sod that would probably call that would be the one that got me fired actually they let me resign but it's essentially the same thing in this case a woman called in a man walking down the street in her neighborhood not being loud or suspicious or disruptive in any way just walking along the sidewalk mom what exactly is the problem then if he's just walking down the street well he just shouldn't be walking here they have no business in our neighborhood so she called the police on and not the 911 line because a black man was minding his own business walking down the street but she just kept saying he shouldn't be walking here and eventually i snapped back with would you feel better if he was running it's one of those moments where you immediately think dang now i have to find a new job i work at an a and e we received a patient who arrived by ambulance because of a bite on his foot which he suspected might come from a venomous spider scorpion etc we live in a country where there are no venomous spiders or scorpions upon arrival he realized that he'd have to wait for a doctor to attend to him as he wasn't exactly prioritized in fridge so he left row such emergency obligatory not a 9-1-1 operator i'm a doctor and i once had to see someone in a e who called an ambulance because he had a paper cut 9-1-1 emergency yes i can't root to my favorite restaurant to make dinner reservations call them and tell them we need seating for eight uh mom that's not something we do then what good are you lpt 911 is for dinner reservations friend who is dispatch 4911 had a call about someone's pain and possible appendix bursting the m's police fire truck and everyone came the person who called apparently stood up and let out a huge fart at which point their pain stopped after 10 minutes of vitals questioned etc all emergency vehicles left in person refused to go to hospital this made me laugh although i did just take my kid recently to urgent care because i was convinced he had appendicitis ended up he was constipated apparently constipation and gas can be incredibly painful obligatory not a i called the 911 on my brother when i was eight because he kept hitting me hung up when it rang the first time bc we both panicked neither of us realized cops can't race where a call came from until a cop showed up at our house and asked to search our house to make sure we weren't in any danger he asked why we called and my brother was like she was trying to call her friend and the number is really close apparently that's common enough that i learned in school that if you dial 9 1 one on accident you should stay on the line and explain that instead of just hanging up a teacher of mine was a former paramedic she said she got called out to an apartment for a medical emergency shortness of breath turns out the guy wanted help glowing up an air mattress she said it was 2 a.m and she was too tired to be angry so she blew up his air mattress while her partner made a coffee run to be fair he was short of breath just not in a way anyone could predict i'm not a 9-1-1 operator but i have a story that fits here several years ago shortly after i had moved into my current house my neighbor at the time would get mad at me for letting my dog crap in his yard now my dog only goes out in the front yard when i'm with him and i keep him contained in my yard sometimes he sneaks a squad when i'm tending the garden but i usually catch him in the act and use a leaf or something to toss the turd back into my yard however my backyard is fenced off by a wooden privacy fence which was in disrepair so i figured my neighbor was complaining about my dog slipping through somewhere and pooping in their backyard fair enough so i go through and repair all the gaps i can find with new boards and all is well next day i come home from work and my neighbor is complaining about dog turds in his yard again i suggest it must be someone else's dog he suggests i go frick myself whatever i've done my due diligence i'm done with their dog [ __ ] i wanna say it was about two three days later that a cop knocked at my front door holding a glad bag my neighbor had given him with a huge dog turd in it and i mean huge almost two inches in diameter the officer explains that my neighbor was filing a nuisance complaint against me because i let my dog crap in his front yard and had been so kind as to provide this bag of evidence of my dog's wrongdoings he had barely finished his introduction when my 11 pounds pomeranian finally woke up from his nap and came bounding to the front door to be petted by the owner of this new voice i said something along the lines of officer if my dog left that i don't think he would be able to walk right now he laughed petted my dog and wished me a good day meanwhile my neighbor's bull mastiff is raising heck in their backyard tl dr neighbor blamed their dog's poos on my dog despite that the offending turds were roughly the same size and weight as my dog almost all of them honestly the worst are the people who won't parent their freaking kids the worst was probably when some sea called because his kid wouldn't go to his room there was also this guy who called regularly because of kids playing on four wheelers they were in a rural area with adult supervision all the proper safety equipment nowhere near the guy's house and were breaking literally no laws he called all the time even after being advised to stop honestly i hate that he was never fined or executed for it let's see we also get a lot of suspicious person calls it's always just a bunch of kids hanging out the two black people in our area or the two sikhs though the callers would say muslims honestly people are stupid the job would have been infinitely easier if we could tell people that their call is freaking [ __ ] and if they would actually be punished for it execution might be a bit extreme not exactly 9-1-1 as this was in australia so it was 0-0-0 however i spoke to some ambulance officers once and asked a similar question their response was well we once attended someone's house who called us because they had a nightmare had a good chuckle at that one something like this happened yesterday in the netherlands someone called 112 because his kitchen was on fire turned out it was just a bad dream not a 911 operator but rather a firefighter listening to police band heard a conversation between dispatch d and an officer oh d unit 1 be advised that we have a report of a girl riding a bike barefoot down the road at 100 miles per hour oh please confirm did you say 100 miles per hour d yes caller is afraid she is going to get a toe caught in the spokes oh i'd be more afraid of her legs falling off at that speed but will try to make contact d trying not to laugh will mark you in route i want to see this i wasn't a 9-1-1 operator but i was a receptionist for a law firm once we once had a lady call and wanted legal advice on suing her paramedics we asked what happened and she explained they broke her ribs as they resuscitated her we tried to explain that it is common to break ribs while preforming cpr she did not care in lieu of payment the court rules that the plaintiff's heart will be stopped got a call once from a man about a noise complaint pretty standard stuff at first but then a priority call came out in the unit on the way to the noise complaint was pulled off to respond to the burglary in progess i.e badger is still there about 10 minutes later we get a call from the same guy ranting and raving about why we aren't there yet i tell him it's because a higher priority event has occurred that needed multiple deputies to respond he says he doesn't give a crap and that his call should be responded to first because he called first he then proceeds to call back every five minutes for the next 30 minutes or so until our watch commander that's night keys up on the channel to say she'll be enroute to the noise complaint about five minutes after she arrives on scene she keys up again with one in custody for abuse of 9-1-1 released with a notice to appear no jail right some people by that i mean most people also i like parentheses definitely understand emergency call taker here every weekend sure many noise complaints for some reason i get some kind of joy out of telling people police won't be attending for a long time before it's the weekend and they're heck busy so in the military we had a call on base from a lady who said her dog was missing i was like did you or anyone begin looking she said no i just paused for a second she then says i'm the commander's wife flash fire to 15 minutes later half of the police patrols are running around base looking for a poodle that went from zero to the biggest case of bulls ever really dang fast got a 9-1-1 call from a person because their fire extinguisher hadn't been checked that month wasn't too happy about that one i once had a 9-1-1 call that was a drowning death of a four-year-old the very next 9-1-1 call i answered was a woman yelling hysterically because she wanted to sign up for the rewards card program at the grocery store and it said her number was already in use someone stole my identity i think i probably would have lost my crap at the lady on the second call yeah like ginger scourge said it's hard to compare the pettiness and banality of most of the calls we deal with what is more petty a 32 year old male who wants medics for toe pain someone calling to get the batteries changed on their smoke detector or a neighbor dispute over tree leaves who can say one of my favorites was over dog poop neighbor one let their dog crap in neighbor two's yard neighbor two went and picked it up and placed it in neighbor one's yard at this point neighbor one called us to report watching this happen then against the best advice i could muster went outside to confront then i got to listen to them both yell at each other threaten each other and continue the hot potato that turd back and forth across their property line until police arrived another gem a few years back was a guy who stabbed his own mother with a fork for eating his hot pocket he had microwaved and felt entitled to a guy who stabbed his own mother with a fork for eating his hot pocket he had microwaved let's be real though you don't eat something that someone else microwaved that's just wrong i have a story that is not petty nor am i a 9-1-1 operator but years ago my family once made what must have been the most ridiculous emergency call on christmas day our large dog fell and got his testicle stuck on the radiator luckily it was not on we thought they would have to pry him out but the level-headed firefighters were able to help slide out his swollen bean without without any tools it was the craziest christmas we ever had in the weirdest call the operator and fire department ever received on christmas friend in the fire department says they are still telling that story today i have been on thousands of non-memorable calls in my 37 years in ms my most memorable though was a guy called 9-1-1 and said he couldn't walk all of a sudden and felt weak i was dispatched as a stroke got there and started talking to the guy he had jock itch i think i may be one of these i called 9-1-1 because there was a dazed bat in my yard flopping around in the middle of the day and i was concerned it was rabid and didn't want the dog getting at it they gave me the non-emergency number and a cop came over scooped him up and gently placed him in the woods nearby i know i could have done the same thing but i didn't want to get attacked or sick and the officer was more than happy to help calling the cops was my last line of defense but i had to due to the following my town has no animal control branch of law enforcement i was unable to find anything for neighboring towns either all the third-party animal control services were either unresponsive or wanted an expensive premium the non-emergency line number wasn't displayed on my town's website not a 911 operator but i remember a story that happened in germany wife called 9-1-1 because her husband wouldn't stop watching p the cops explained they couldn't do anything but recommended a marriage counselor not the operator but i have a relevant story i was in the awaiting room with a particularly bad kidney stone i had already been there three hours and the waiting room wasn't really that full i had already gone through trij so i was wondering what the frick i go up to the receptionist type person and ask her how much longer it will be she responds with oh you were next but someone came in by ambulance with a sore throat an ambulance for a freaking sore throat it was at that moment i lost faith in humanity luckily i was called in about 10 minutes later and 10 minutes after that i had my sweet sweet dilaudid we have several regulars who abuse 999. one of them goes through phases of calling countless times in a day never speaking but you can hear she's there listening to us trying to get a response from her thing is when we go and arrest her she admits an interview that she knows it's wrong and could be preventing us from responding to an emergency but still does it again a few days later another calls police because he has mental health issues and doesn't like calling nhs 111 non-emergency medical line and thinks police are nice but then abuses us down the phone and refuses to accept any help or advice we offer he's actually started calling 101 now rather than 999 as he thinks it'll keep him out of trouble i had a woman the other night who called 999 and opened with okay two things which is never a good start proceeded to complain about a drunk man lying in the middle of the road shouting at people i was actually aware of this already it was an elderly male who'd slipped and broken his hip and had been calling out for help for an hour before someone called us and we got an officer ambulance out there so that pee me off that she hadn't bothered helping him or calling earlier then she complained about someone parking in her parking space shut that one down pretty quickly most annoying is the ones that start with it's not an emergency but they always know there's a non-emergency line but can't be bothered to wait to be spoken to 9-1-1 stroke 999 call operators of ridic how do you tell the difference between a distress call where someone may be trying to contact the police without alerting an attacker or just an accidental call gone off in someone's pocket how often do accidental cause discreet distress calls happen i used to take 911 is 112 for police here though and one time i answered but there was complete silence on the other side i tried to get some sort of response but nothing after a couple of seconds though i heard clicking of the very soft kind it was hard to understand what was going on but i understood that something was wrong that was when i heard that the clicking was actually someone tapping their nails on the phone to make sos with morse code immediately got a police car to the address and surely enough there was an armed robbery going on where the mother of the house had managed to hide in a closet right by the one of the robbers there were two of them that was holding the rest of the family hostage it truly could have ended very bad if she didn't remember or was too afraid to call sorry about any bad english why do all the sorry for bad english comments have good english accidental 9-1-1 calls happen all the time the majority of offenders are officers that have to dial nine to get an outside line then dial one before the area code but dials on cell phones kids that have an old cell phone that still has a battery and they hit the emergency call button any cell phone can dial an emergency call even if it is not activated our local policy here is that any 9-1-1 call even if someone gets on the phone to say sorry the police have to respond to check it out i did 9-1-1 call taking dispatching for 13 years sometimes you just get a feeling most computer-aided dispatching programs have features that tell you if you've received calls from a particular number address person in the past along with the type of call history so if i look over call history and see domestic issues then they are getting a cop no matter what they tell me but if i'm talking to a little baby and hear the mother walk in the room and take the phone and she says everything's okay with no call history then i tell my sergeant and let him be the final decision on whether or not there will be a police response i felt pretty comfortable with my intuition we handled a call one night where my partner thought she heard a little sniffle on the line when she answered it was just barely audible and then the line was disconnected our system gave us a general gps location so we got police started then we researched the number and got an exact address as the officer got to the house he peeked in the front window and saw a slight movement over the stairs he kicked and the door and found the woman hanging he cut her down and saved her life she had called 9-1-1 so that officers would find her instead of her family she later told the officer that as soon as she saw him turn on her street she strung herself up had my partner not paid attention or didn't continue searching for an exact address that woman would probably be dead that's incredible i guess that intuition is a big part of the job thanks a friend of mine drunkenly decided it was a good idea to call nine one one on my phone while we were at a bar i quickly hung up but they called back from a normal phone number when i answered to apologize they asked me a lot of yes or no questions assuming it was to protect me if someone were telling me what to say ie are you safe could you tell us if you were in any danger but they didn't show up once i confirmed that i was okay i've also dialed 9-1-1 by accident once from a hotel that required darling 9 before the number that time i spoke to them told them i was ok but they showed up at our hotel room 10 minutes later to check everything out i used to be a 9-1-1 operator dispatcher that is what we had to do ask them if they are able to tell us if they were in danger we also still had to send an officer to them anyway it seems a bit overkill but better safe than sorry not the same but i do phone systems we were doing a large install for a multi-building campus their old system was such an old pose that 911 either didn't work in some buildings or was run out of a different building so the address was wrong etc i took a significant amount of time setting everything up properly and working with the local pdms to make sure that if any of the local fire ms police 911 were called they got the correct caller it along with the exact right building you might ask how do you test this well in this case because this was my project i spent over time two days eight eight going to at least half of the phones in the building darling 9-1-1 due to what these buildings did the 50 phones and testing every building was of high importance hello 9-1-1 this is from calling to test can you please give me the location which this call resolves to as you might imagine that line lasted all of three calls after that it was me yo 911 same or address me thanks click all day two days straight 40 plus buildings hundreds of phones not one mistake client said and did you test the fire dept no and i'm not going to i'm confident it works after two days of testing i called back thanked them profusely for putting up with me and sent two pizzas over to them i was a 9-1-1 operator for two years in a very small town and i dealt with both of these situations more often than not it was children who would call over and overthinking that it was hilarious to hang up in our ears that is until we sent the cops to their house and would be able to hear the children get spankings then one incident happened where a girl called and put the phone in her pocket and i could hear her crying as her boyfriend beat her and threatened to shoot her and i had to get officers to the scene without the boyfriend knowing the girl got out of the room with him long enough to unlock the bedroom window for the officers to enter through but very scary but very rewarding when the girl was able to thank me face to face ro it must get annoying getting kids and idiots who don't know how to lock their phones but things like this i suppose make up for it i was jumping on a trampoline with my older son once and he was bouncing me and i was screaming because i couldn't get up turns out i accidentally dialed 9-1-1 from my pocket the police showed up and asked if there was a girl screaming at this address i had to explain rather embarrassed that it was me i'm a 28 year old man let that sink in it is very very difficult to tell when this is genuine and it is something i worried about as a 999 call handler i got a call once from a woman who had collapsed in a church she was talking normally one minute and the next i could hear her whispering the words help help then she would go back to answering my questions normally and again whisper down the phone help me help me we are trained to ask them to tap the phone if in danger but english wasn't her first language the phone cut out and we advised a crew who went out turns out she was talking to a friend and needed her to help translate the call however there was another case here where a woman did exactly this it was a pocket dial and all you could hear was a man asking about a woman in directions or something similar anyway the call handler ended the call and it turns out she had been kidnapped and murdered eventually it was horrible and it was something i honestly feared missing the short answer is you don't almost without exception you will be getting a quick visit from the police it's not a big deal and no one gets in trouble or anything but there's no way to tell that you are actually safe unless an officer lays eyes on you despite what you read on reddit most police officers are really nice folks they would rather respond to a hundred but dials then show up late to a domestic turned homicide they would rather respond to a hundred but dials then show up late to a domestic turned homicide this a million times over absolutely devastating i used to be an emt in the catch-all dispatch when someone would dial 9 1 1 and it wasn't clear what was going on were dispatched as a sick person and they'd send us the ambulance and a police cruiser so when we were waiting at the station for a call and got sick person it was always an exciting ride over not knowing what it would actually be ninety percent of the time it was boring or nothing but there's always that ten percent nine one one dispatcher here when i first started the job i had no idea what the heck i was doing i had an experienced officer sitting the desk with me for three months i was the only dispatcher on after a while you get the feeling talking to people you understand tones or stress in someone's voice you also understand when someone is being a prick and freaking around either way you are going to get a knock on your door if you are pranking 9-1-1 also i let my officers know you are screwing around and they make sure to give you a nice talking too any other questions that i can answer i gladly will i have been a dispatcher for almost two years now as well as police fire i will answer the best i can hopefully this isn't so stuffed away in these 2713 comments here's my time to shine so back when i was 16 or so i had this stupid two-sided phone one side was all touch screen with two buttons and the other side was a tiny screen with the number pad anyways i am at a friend's house and he suggests we go hang out with his neighbors all right no prob we head over there we are all sitting in the kitchen when the neighbor guy says oh hey let me show you guys this cool new thing i got little did i know my friend was in on the whole deal so a couple minutes passes by and my friend says hey chop chop modafica look i ever so slightly turn my head to my left and i'm face to face with a snake i have never screamed jumped up ran so fast in my life i lock myself in the bathroom thinking i'm safe while these buttholes one up me and start shoving the snake under the door commence more screaming and me begging them to stop while simultaneously trying to hoist myself onto the sink i managed to butt dial the emergency call option on my phone so the operator picks up unbeknownst to me and hears me screaming bloody murder saying stop please for the love of god stop play siri finally they stop at which point my phone rings and i hear mom i have units dispatched to you are you in a safe location so after calming down and explaining what was going on the dispatcher asks all persons in the house stand outside and wait for units to arrive we are outside and we see a helicopter and we are all saying i wonder what they are looking for units arrive check me out see snake all the while this helicopter is in the air so i ask what the helicopter is looking for the officer is like oh yeah says something in 10 codes over his radio and the helicopter bee lines out of the area i've never felt so stupid in my entire life tl dr friend scared me with snake but dialed 911 heard my bloody murder scream send helicopter and units out to see snake and make sure i'm okay i was on the road with my local pd as a crash investigator so i was on the same radio channels because i was often the first only person besides rescue if needed to show up to a crash we had hangups get called out but they would always include a number so the first thing they would do is call it back from the didn't get an 911 they would put out a call with a specific signal code like a 10 code that was just a call and hang up with no dialogue if it seemed like a pocket call or the phone was hidden but they could make out background sounds they would describe them to the officer there's a fight or someone crying or something loud in the background the call center has call history built into the call receiving system so let's say this happened four times in the last 10 minutes that would be relayed to the responding officer if it happened 10 times in the last year that would too because it's probably a messed up alarm system or something so it's case by case x dispatcher here this type of call was common we simply could not tell if the person is in distress and acting or if nothing is really happening like they are claiming so we would always send out deputies it's very common to send deputies out in one of these situations only to be called out to the same location later in the night for an incident as it escalated after they left from my perspective as long as i could hear something on the other end i would listen and take notes for what is going on as possible if i couldn't hear anything on the other end i would stay with the call as long as possible i also had situations where the person called and pretended to be talking to their sister or something else i'd have to ask all of my questions with yes or no answers are you in danger can you get away to somewhere safe does the other person have a weapon do they have a stick or bat do they have a knife do they have a gun is the person a male is the person a female are you related to this person you get the idea it was like a mini mystery piecing together what happened until the deputies arrived then you'd hear a deputy's voice in the background usually they didn't even say goodbye much less thank you when people are petrified they forget their manners i'm sure they appreciated it don't take it personally i currently work as an emergency call handler in the uk during a standard shift we end up with a number of silent calls or calls that have dropped before the operator has passed them to us when calling 999 in the uk you firstly go through to a bt operator where they will ask you what service you want they will then pass you to us police if you request more than one service that includes the police then you will always be put through to us first we can then call either fire or ambulance when you have a silent call you will always try to call them back while this is happening you tag the intel team to start completing checks on the number such as whether they have called before and possibly gave an address if you call from a landline then the operator will know your address a view call from a mobile we will be given approximate location details red flags would be previous calls linked to domestic violence intel objects relating to child neglect or issues in the home if we have an exact address such as when people call from a landline we will always attend if it's a mobile with no previous calls or until then we will call three times and then close pending further calls if anyone has any other questions relating to the job fire away tip for american tourists visiting stuttgart if you dial 9 1 1 there you end up at porsche headquarters not the police police is 110 in germany not sure about everywhere but where i grew up any ambiguous 9-1-1 call including silence on the other end involved sending a police car an ambulance and a fire truck just in case even if they are 99 sure it's a prank or accident hopefully this is similar everywhere though probably less practical in large cities it may have been sobbed to have police an emergency medical service and a fire department involved in every 9-1-1 back in the day but now it's just send a police car and check out if there is a real emergency it would cost too much money to send out all three services on every nine one one calls i usually listen if it doesn't seem bad just to attempt to call back if they answer i get an address and send a cop if not they get a voicemail saying they need to give us a call back on the non-emergency line if it seems suspicious then i'll take a couple extra steps in locating an owner to the phone but other than that you can't do much more one call i had was i heard like a woman yelling and then the line went dead after that i called back and spoke to a male who said he lived in the woods so we search the area of the pink from 911 and get nothing then we ping the dude's cell phone and find him in his house he did have one and everything appeared normal and we haven't had a body show up since fingers crossed also check out our slash 911 dispatchers where we have weekly discussions and also allow for these types of questions all the time i am late to the party but i was a 9-1-1 dispatcher it relied on a lot of intuition honestly dispatching really requires you to trust your instincts and they get scaryly accurate when i was training i learned from a lady who won a national award for her work we had a call where the female caller said she was in a car accident and hit a tree but was now at home she sounded more afraid and upset than most car accident victims so we pressed for more information the caller got more upset so we started asking yes no questions are you hurt yes are you alone number is your husband with you yes did he hurt you yes domestic violence calls are highly dangerous for officers so it was really important to figure this out and dispatch multiple officers when we wouldn't have for just a traffic accident we sent two or three officers it turned out that the caller had been assaulted by her husband and he was trying to pass it off as injuries from a car accident that job is hard as heck but very rewarding another gut feeling helped me take part in the rescue of a kidnapped child from an amber alert it's one of my proudest moments uk 999 operator here i work in the center which takes the 999 call initially the caller then tells us which emergency service they need and we connect them to that service for us we have very strict procedures to follow if the caller won't speak or it seems to be about dial the mantra we follow is if in any doubt connect and let the police deal with it back in college there was a guy who was constantly scamming people by saying his car broke down and he needed money for fix a flat but would pay you back then disappear knowing a few people who had been scammed he tried it on me one night i said sure but my cash is in my car parked down the block let's walk to it i then say oh my girlfriend is calling me one second i pull my phone out and dial nine one one the answer and i say oh hey honey i'm all right but if you need me you should really come to intersection the dispatcher kept asking if this was an emergency and again i'd say yeah you should really come here if you need me this went on for about five minutes until i eventually said how have you not picked up on this by now the 9-1-1 dispatcher then hung up on me and the dude ran away not only was i shocked she couldn't get the hint but that she would hang up on a person about a year ago someone in our company had the wonderful idea of creating an internal safety hotline and they had lots of expensive handouts printed up with the number on it all kinds of themes around it and the number was drumroll please x9911 i was the poor killjoy who had to break the bad news to them did try to suggest zero one one eight nine nine nine eight eight one nine nine nine one one nine seven two five three as an alternative nine one one dispatcher here as a general protocol we ask callers who do not respond after the call is answered to tap twice on the phone if they're in distress in most cases whether they do or not we send an officer their way just to be safe accidental calls happen all the time 8-10 times a day on an average day discreet distress calls are not so common maybe one a week and ninety percent of the time it's a domestic violence call where the victim doesn't want is her attacker to know they've called 9-1-1 this will probably get buried but a great story about my wife then girlfriend comes home with me from college for first thanksgiving with my family when we get to my parents house my parents make sure she gets to her phone to call her folks and let them know we're here safe while at college you had to dial nine to get an external number then dial the whole number including the one before the area code reflexively she does this and realizes after dialing 9-1 she didn't need to well apparently where my parents live they can monitor for attempted 9-1-1 calls she's still on the phone with her mom when the cop shows up and takes a look around the house and sees my brothers myself and my dad tapping the keg for the weekend we offered him a beer after having a good laugh obviously he declined also offered him some turkey the following day thanksgiving but he was fortunately off to spend time with his family my wife is still mortified about calling the cops on my parents we still laugh about it every thanksgiving hey danger arsene 2004's wife you gonna call the cops this year good times about 10 years ago or so a body was found behind the dumpster of a convenience store it had been there a few weeks they checked 9-1-1 calls from the outside pay phone from around the estimated time of death a young man had called said he was getting hassled by some guys then his voice changes dramatically sounds almost like a little boy and he's saying stuff like oh no oh my god why they never sent any cops and he was getting stabbed while on the phone when i heard it played on the news it made me queasy just remembering it makes me sad one time i was driving home from a concert down the back roads and saw a car off the road in a ditch with airbags deployed i stopped the car got out and dialed 9-1-1 before i could talk to the dispatcher a gun was pointed at me and a guy said you get in your freaking car and drive away do not call for help i'm drunk and i got this under control so i hung up the phone got in my car and drove off minutes later the 911 operator called back and asked if i was okay i explained the situation and told them i was leaving the scene out of fear for my life but would wait in a nearby public place if i needed to be questioned i waited about a half hour in a kroger parking lot for the cops to talk to me they never did i don't know if anything came from it people should know that many communities in the united states are utilizing a database service called smart 911 which allows you to log on to the site and proactively add information about your household that will pop up on the dispatches screen if and when you ever have to make a call to this might include medical stuff like a person has seizures number of family members security codes for the front gate etc it's especially helpful with people with just cell phones or void phones so it can give a clear address attached to your phone number in my community snarhamish county washington it literally was launched today and seems like a great service a friend of mine discreetly called with a gun 911 into his car at a gas station and made him drive somewhere he was going to rob when the call went through he started talking loudly put down the gun and let's talk this out we're on the corner of maine and state street isn't there somewhere i can drop you off the idiot on the other end couldn't figure it out and began to loudly say hello uh did you die on accident so this line is for emergencies only needless to say this agitated the man with the gun how he managed to talk the guy into letting him drop him off is beyond my understanding he did work at a crisis center so this wasn't the first time he's had to deal with de-escalating a situation but still he is lucky to be alive after that massive freak up on the part of the 9-1-1 operator 9-1-1 stroke 999 call operators of reddit how do you tell the difference between a distress call where someone may be trying to contact the police without alerting an attacker or just an accidental call gone off in someone's pocket how often do accidental cause discreet distress calls happen i'm not a 999 stroke 911 dispatcher i arrived at work one morning before anyone else as is normal the phone starts ringing so i answer it it's a lady who works one the 999 switchboard and tells me that they'd had a call from this number and wanted to check everything was okay i explained that is just arrived at work and that there's no one else here but me she asked if i was sure because a lady had called 999 screamed down the phone and then hung up i just about crap my pants they send a cop around and found everything to be normal we never found out what had gone on long time lurker first time poster not a call operator but i had a situation happen with me so i had been out of work for a while and been looking but no luck i was at an aaa meeting one friday night and was outside talking to some friends guy walks up and asks if any of us are looking for work i pop up and start discussing with him what the job would be limo driver dope i'm up for it so we arrange a beating the next day at four now the next day i start to realize i know nothing about this guy other than that he is supposedly sober i did meet him at an aaa meeting so i also have a galaxy s5 as a phone and playing around with it one day led me to an emergency setting where if you push the lock home button three times it will take a picture with the front and back camera and send a message to your emergency contacts with an approximate gps location i had told my sponsee mom and roommate about this and about my arrangement for the night and if they get a message to call the cops fast forward i meet up with the guy everything's fine phones in my back pocket and i'm driving this late 90s cadillac stretch the car was awesome when out of nowhere i feel my phone vibrating off the hook i have the security partition up so i pull my phone out about 30 minutes prime my butt must have set the emergency setting off twice and all my emergency contacts are freaking out in a group text my heart drops i immediately start to respond to the text when i get a call from an unknown number it's the local sheriff my sponsee had called the cops and reported me as kidnapped i had to convince them that everything was cool and that i really was safe and not tied up in a basement all deliverance style so that's my story and that's why i don't keep the emergency setting on my phone anymore paramedic here depending on what the dispatchers here they'll also send ems and fire in addition to the police m's won't bill you for above dial but my fire department will build the caller 500 for a false alarm if you don't pay then they add it onto your or your landlord's property taxes this is why i don't pre-program 9-1-1 into my phone or have a phone with an emergency button my friend once called the cops about a shooting outside her apartment the operator just told her it was probably a firecracker and hung up without there being any follow-up before katrina the nopd did the test they went around different neighborhoods and discharged blanks hundreds of them to see how long it took people to call nine one one no one ever called i work for a large bank and managed a process that used to send huge numbers of automated fax confirmations some clients would request that we stop sending the facts with the usual crap tools at our disposal the easiest way to do that was to just change the number to some random non-working number so we used one billion one hundred and eleven million one hundred and eleven thousand one hundred and eleven what could possibly go wrong well you have to dial nine to get an external line so the automatic system dials nine one one one and wouldn't you know that goes to nine one one so basically we launched an old-school dos attack on nine one one the state police were about to shut down the power supply to the entire building before it could finally terminate the process little did they know the facts server was located in another state surprisingly i learned that 911 accepts faxes and had to go to the dispatch center to collect those that got through i also learned you don't need to dial nine to get an outside line four nine one one instinct you just get this feeling something isn't right have dispatched cops or medics just cause of a gut feeling has worked out a few times where it helped the person you may be wrong 9 times out of 10 but that one time you follow through it can save a life also looking a call history for address or phone number helps that has always been helpful not a 911 operator but i worked for an audio video surveillance company for a while where we occasionally had to dispatch police and other emergency personnel when required i once received a panic button alarm activation from a hotel in california our standard protocol was to pull up the live video feed and call the location if a panic button had been triggered i pulled up the feed and called the hotel twice and didn't receive an answer and no one including workers appeared to be in the lobby but this was suspicious as there is at least one desk attendant at all times i had a co-worker go ahead and dispatch police for a standard walkthrough while i was reviewing the last 10 minutes or so of video footage what i saw was one of the most heartbreaking and tragic events i've ever witnessed i saw a woman carrying a young sleeping child probably aged two or three from floor to floor of the hotel at times i would see her walking up the stairs and at others i'd see her getting out of the elevators this woman was obviously distressed and was crying but i couldn't see any reason for her to be upset the hotel itself was a large square and there was a section in the middle of each side where there were large balcony areas for smoking the woman eventually took the elevator up to the sixth floor and walked out onto the balcony where she proceeded to throw her sleeping child down into the courtyard area below she then wrapped one end of an extension cord around her neck and the other onto the balcony railing and then flung herself as hard as she could over the edge the cord broke and she ended up falling onto a balcony two stories down dead from a broken neck for a couple that had been out on a balcony saw her fall and went inside to tell the desk attendant the couple ran outside to see what the woman had thrown over the balcony before herself and the desk clark pressed the panic button so we would dispatch police in the time it took about 10 seconds for us to respond the couple had found the child and picked it up the attendant saw what they were holding and fainted behind the desk making it impossible for us to see her i'm so thankful for the 911 operators and police officers who handle situations like these on a daily basis i only worked in security for a few months but it made me realize how freaking courageous these people are i'm not a 9-1-1 call operator but i just want to commend 9-1-1 operators of being as calm as they are when an actual distress call comes to them speaking from experience my parents got into an argument which then escalated to a fight once my dad struck my mom and my mom started to defend herself and i immediately picked up the phone and called 911 out of terror that my father would potentially badly hurt or even kill my mom my voice was trembling and i kept stammering cause i was so afraid the 911 operator was just trying to keep me as calm as possible and for that i'm thankful you guys have definitely a seriously hard job and i want to thank you for your work as cliche as it may sound this moment in my life changed me a little bit i accidentally did the emergency call when my phone was locked i think i cancelled and they called back i quickly apologized and told them it was a pocket dial they seem relieved not mad or anything i've done it twice on my phone they appreciate it much better if you follow through with the initial call instead of having up both times i said it was an accident and there was no emergency and that i was in no danger and they thanked me and no trouble was had i know i'm way late big current dispatcher here working now actually on a typical day around forty percent minus sixty percent of the nine one one calls you answer tend to be pocket dials and contrary to what you see on tv very rarely do people try to discreetly call nine 9-1-1 we are trained to handle situations where they do but in the two years experience i have so far i haven't had it happen and haven't been told any stories by my fellow dispatchers of them experiencing it to answer your question if people do discreetly call us and don't speak directly to us it is generally a bad thing tv has taught society that 9-1-1 can quickly and accurately triangulate your location if you call from a cell phone we can't with the new generation of 911 systems we can get roughly a 100 yard radius of where your phone is but if you are in an apartment or crowded urban street good luck finding that always give your location even if that is the only thing you can give that way we know where to go you learn to recognize pocket dials very quickly they are either just swishing sounds or a whole lot of buttons being pressed oftentimes we get calls from children playing with disconnected but still powered phones all phones can call nine one one even if they aren't hooked up to a provider and those are the most difficult since they often call numerous times and we have no idea where the phone actually is but when you only have five people working at that time that constant 9-1-1 call can get very frustrating i've commented this before i once received an emergency call from a bulldog the dog had knocked the phone over and dialed nine every time it moved it was sleeping on the phone and it sounded like someone who was choking emergency services were sent out the dog was fine was a hotel clerk and was robbed at gunpoint they tied my hands together and my feet together once they left i was able to call nine one one i told them what happened and asked them to hurry for i was tied up the operator dumbass at me this is a really crap answer but in all honestly i think it's something that just comes with experience i can usually tell in the first five seconds of a call how it's going to play out but you ofc get the occasional one in someone's pocket where you unsure and we will devour to do everything we can to make sure all is well with the caller as for how from prank calls happen from adults very rarely like genuine prank absolutely nothing happening maybe only one or two a month tend to get regulars who come in waves and last a few days during school holidays we get numerous a day kids just messing about often the operator will confirm it was children on the line or that they sounded like they weren't genuine i keep reading comments about how people repeatedly but dial nine one one you're tying up the line for someone who may need it the first time it happens you should take steps to ensure it doesn't happen again i don't think it's something to be taken lightly if somebody calls in and hangs up they are called back a few attempts are made you cannot assume something is distressful by just hearing it a kid playing and screaming on a deactivated cell phone which cannot be called back may sound like a female screaming who is going to put money on making that distinction people in distress often are whispering you can hear screaming or crashing in the background and use your gut sometimes when you run the number it has a history of domestic disturbances and then the cops will go if it's a landline there's an address which makes it easier cell phones also have records which can take some time to pull from the record you have a name an address and can run any known history of calls or violence or whatever if you call 9 1 1 by accident stay on the phone don't just hang up and screen the calls because then you're wasting police resources stay on the line and clearly say something like yes i called 911 by mistake it was in my pocket that way the operator knows that nobody who was in danger would be so blatant to say that kind of crap even still they will ask follow-up questions like is there any reason why you wouldn't be able to talk right now then again nothing is absolute sometimes a female will call and say oh sorry wrong number and you'll hear a male voice then you ask who they're with they say oh nobody it was an accident and then you know something's going on if they're not admitting there's somebody else there there is no real way of knowing if a call is accidental or being made discreetly without being able to talk to the caller a silent cutoff 999 call can never be filtered and ignored based on any technique which is why our unit will always be dispatched to it if a location is known background noise will be a big giveaway in most cases if it quite clearly is a pocket dial you may be able to exhaust non-emergency responses in the first instance but a mobile phone has an unknown location without someone to speak to there is only so much you can do ordinarily you will have a unit attend home address if that information is available to you by way of a link from the number whom dialed however for the reasons just stated a discreet genuine emergency 999 call without being able to communicate with the caller presents a difficulty you can dispatch a unit of a home address if known otherwise you are completely dependent on cues based on what the caller is saying what those in the background are saying or if other noises can be heard inside outside busy area in a vehicle indicator clickers are noisy as heck on a phone call if you can speak to a caller they may still be being discrete i want a taxi please could quite easily be seen as a hoax accidental call but the caller really does want the police which is why you should vet such a call with closed questions do you know you have called the police do you require the police is it an emergency are you injured are you at risk of harm are you at your home address tell them their own home address if you know it all yes no questions one thing i will say to you all accidental 999 dials happen never ever ever ever just hang up ever explain it was an accident be prepared to get asked some question to validate the authenticity of what you are saying primarily to ensure you are not under duress see closed questions prior a cutoff 999 call is an absolute nightmare especially from a mobile phone especially one with no linked address person data the inconvenience of 10 seconds to verify an accidental call is a whole load better than thinking someone is being attacked killed raped and tried to summon assistance but could not how often do they happen silent cut off 999s happen frequently generally they turn out to just be accidental most 999 calls do not warrant a 999 call a small percent of the total of taken 999s are genuine i used to have a cell number that was x91-1xxx my friend tried to call me one day and he missed the first number on his phone and didn't know it the unfortunate part is that the guy that answered his mistaken 9-1-1 call sounded just like me my friend thinks it's me screwing with him and so he starts playing along saying that a bunch of men are trying to get into his house to rape him and a bunch of other messed up crap of course the guy on the phone thinks this is strange so he's trying to get more info but my friend thinks it's still me messing with him and starts in on the guy again he told me later when he got out of jail that he realized his mistake about five seconds before the cops kicked in his front door and hauled him off he also said the worst part of the whole thing wasn't the fines or the jail time but standing in a courtroom full of people in front of the judge having the phone call played and trying to explain his jokes this man is a doctor now we both still have six senses of humor though when i was a kid there was a cat up in a tree yes like in the movies i decided to be the responsible one and call nine one one as the started to 911 my dad yelled at me to hang up the phone and not bother the people who were there for emergencies a few seconds later the dispatcher called our phone again and my dad answered this time but the dispatcher wouldn't have it she he yelled at my dad that they didn't want to speak to him after he told them it was a misunderstanding but that they wanted to speak to the little girl so i got on the phone and told them that there was a cat up in the tree the 9-1-1 dispatcher was nice and told me that help was on the way i guess it was a slow day since two fire trucks one ambulance and a police car came to our house for a cat the firemen came out in their huge uniforms all ready for the unexpected they got on the ladder and tried to grab the cat but the cat just jumped and landed safely on the ground anyway my parents were yelled at by the police again saying that they should teach me when it's necessary to use 9-1-1 i was given a pat on the back and congratulated for being an outstanding citizen after all that was said and done the cat was back on the tree again an hour later my dad warned me not to call nine one one back for the cat my mom and grandma used to have me practice calling 9-1-1 on my plastic toy phone they would wait in one room to come rescue me and i would go in the other room to call the first time though i burst into panic tears my mom ran in to comfort me thinking i was scared of the pretend emergency i managed to sob out i can't find the other one i once was making out with my girlfriend at the time and my phone went off we were going at it hot and heavy but i took a moment to check my phone caller it wasn't something i recognized so i answered this number contacted emergency services is there an emergency i stammered i apologize i must have been dialed 9-1-1 while making out with my girlfriend i'm very sorry the dispatcher didn't seem angry and we didn't have officers show up or check on us so i'm not sure what i said that saved us from that headache after i hung up i explained the situation to my gf and we continued our session tldr almost but dialed in emergency three-way in 1994 we were watching the oj simpson slow speed bronco chase live on tv unknown to us our toddler was playing with the phone and he hit the 9-1-1 speed dial the dispatcher heard an open line and sent a patrol car two cops rang our door and asked if we were okay we let them look around i found the phone and hung it up then the cops joined us as we watched oj on the tv until he reached his house when i was four i purposefully dialed because my grandad was a police officer and i thought that was how you called them 9-1-1 operators of reddit what's the most blood-chilling emergency call you've heard mother calling stating her baby is choking on a coin can hear the commotion in the back and couldn't do anything the kid was choking and dying don't know what else happened after oh god i swallowed a nickel when i was like four and my dad just grabbed me by the ankle and proceeded to beat me on my back repeatedly until it fell out no idea how that managed to work my sister is a 9-1-1 operator she would call my parents whenever she was upset after a cold day at work one of the worst ones she told us about was an eight-year-old boy calling from his bedroom because the kitchen and hallway were on fire outside his room she notified fire department but knowing the location was rural and it would take them ten plus minutes to get there she began to try and give instructions on what he needed to do to get out starting with finding an object to break the window so he could climb out but between having to calm him down get the information keep him calm and get him to listen to her instructions he ended up burning to death on the phone with her a couple minutes before help showed up from that day on i realized how difficult and strenuous this job actually is and that i would never be able to do it there's a lot of things in this thread that i find horrifying but somehow this gets to me more than anything else carjacking wherewoman was dragged out of the car but her three kids weren't got carr and kids back 45 minutes later after chase x town but little girl had been assaulted suspect told her he'd kill her little brothers if she screamed that breaks my [ __ ] heart had a phone call from a distressed father his son had gone missing and had left a note saying he loved his family but couldn't go on living anymore the call prior to this one was from the railway manager telling me that a train driver had just hit a human i had already dispatched to patrick to the area and i had already heard the report and it was horrible my colleague in the patrick was on the verge of breakdown describing the scene body parts lay strewn everywhere and an id was found now knowing this i put two and two together and knew that i was talking to a father who had all hopes of finding his son alive again the son had done similar things before the father told me that his wife the dead man's mother was out looking for the sun i had a radio running in the background so that i could pick up info from the sioux city and as i was telling the father that the police would help in the search for the lost son i heard the most bola chilling scream that i ever heard the mother had arrived at the tracks and i could hear her horrified wailing at what she saw it was horrible and i had such a hard time holding back tears and keeping my tone straight and civil the father thanks me for the help and i could hang up the call was not allowed to give the father the news and frankly it is just not something to deliver in a phone call their son was dead and gone the father had to be kept in the dark until my patrol could give him the news and the mother was utterly heartbroken her desperate wailing on that radio it knocks my stomach to this day my mom has heard everything she's taken calls about children being abused rapes and murders nothing gets to her quite like suicide she's still shaken about one man in particular four years after taking his call a man called and in the most calm stoic voice said i'm going to kill myself mum started her normal approach to this and tried to ask him not to do it ask him what was wrong he interrupted her immediately and said without emotion there's nothing you can do i made my decision a week ago i'm going to kill myself today gave his location said my wife will be home in an hour i'll be in my bedroom he hung up the phone mom repeatedly called his number back but there was never any answer with each call she wondered if he did it yet if he could hear his phone ring as he was doing it he died that day when the police arrived he was long gone his wife arrived right on time and the police had to explain to her what happened it was all perfectly planned it's as if my mom was speaking to someone who was already dead he was so far gone when he called her there was nothing she could do it took her a long time to come to terms with that been dispatching for eight years i work in a very rough area taken a lot of messed up calls shootings suicides and whatnot nothing is worse than sids having to calm down a parent that just found their baby unexpectedly deceased get them to tell you their address and give them cpr instructions that you both know won't help is probably the hardest thing to handle having two kids of my own it's moments like this i pull out my phone look at their photos and text home to make sure they're okay the one that stuck with me was a 9-1-1 hang-up starts out as an abandoned call as in a call where the caller hung up before we could answer call back and when i get an answer they calmly explain that their cousin had called and that there was no emergency right before she hangs up i hear cry of help in the background to be absolutely certain i have the operator next to me listen to the recording and confirm that there was a cry for help in the background unfortunately this was a call that came from a cell phone so automatic location information is not a given and despite an attempt to call back and get wireless phase 2 information it is unsuccessful so i call the phone company's corporate security team which is responsible for assisting us in such cases it's unfortunate that it takes something like half an hour to get through the necessary authentication steps but they are able to give us an address for the subscriber and a last available gps location in this case the two locations were close together the gps coordinates came back near a creek behind the school the addresser house about a half mile away a typical response for a 911 is one officer who will casually drive through the area with the windows down if anyone needs help they can approach them or the officer will hear any signs of an emergency this one got three a road patrol unit the student resource officer for the school the gps coordinates came back near and the watch commander they were out in the area for about an hour looking tried knocking on the subscriber's address door and went out on foot down to the creek but found nothing maybe it was never really anything maybe the person who answered the phone was telling the truth i'll never know i'm sorry that sounds awful to liv wander about i was a dispatcher for about four years in a rural county the worst call i got was a hunting accident a guy took his six-year-old son out hunting with him and gave the kid a loaded rifle to carry with him the kid while trying to get through tamarack bushes grabbed the weapon by the barrel and dragged it behind him the weapon got caught on a branch and discharged into the kid's head the father called 9-1-1 got me and didn't know where he was at as he wasn't familiar with the area and it wasn't his land all he could tell me was that they had passed a lake or pond on a dirt road there are several dirt roads with ponds and i was able to narrow it down to six roads with the location data from the cell towers this was the early 2000s and triangulation in rural areas sucked not sure how much better it is now and his information i dispatched every deputy i had on duty all two of them the one city cop i had on duty and both our ambulances and fire trucks to the areas state patrol also assisted with the search it took us over 20 minutes to find them and the whole time the father wept uncontrollably screaming please don't be dead over and over again through the instructions i gave him from the flip chart to check his vitals try to stop the bleeding etc my instructions only lasted about five minutes and i had given him all the info i was trained to give the remaining 15 felt like an eternity and from what the father told me and what i was told by the deputies after he was pretty much dead immediately after the accident the emts still went through with their routines and loaded the kid in the ambulance because none of them felt comfortable doing otherwise i'm the situation this was my first shift back after the birth of my son so i think that's why it sticks with me two off the top of my head car crash where the caller says hey this guy is bleeding from his head you guys need to hurry up can you put pressure on it to stop the bleeding nah i don't want to get involved the guy died trying to talk to an 18-year-old son calling because his dad was just shot in the head randomly by their drunk roommate mum comes downstairs to see what the commotion is total chaos first guy in your story is a dong didn't happen to me but a co-worker i used to work for a company like life alert the person who rang in was quadriplegic and there was a house fire the fire truck didn't make it in time they said the screams messed him up so much that he couldn't take another call and move to yt i still get chills thinking about it that is just horrifying suicides are the worst and way more common than people might think a few days before christmas 2017 we got a call from a father who woke up and found his 15-year-old daughter hanging in the basement to make matters worse officers revived her but the loss of oxygen left her brain dead her parents ultimately had to decide to take her off life support like losing your child twice a good friend of mine did something similar hung himself from a tree told his childhood friend where to find him right before and ended up brain dead whenever i feel at all suicidal i just think about how selfish it would be to put my family through all that i was a caller in this case but when i was 12 i woke up to my dad single parent making strange sounds i walked into his room to find him sat at his computer eyes open blood trickling down his chin non-responsive one of the most horrifying experiences of my life immediately called 999 and british operator was a champ and did a great job of keeping me calm until ambulance arrived paramedics managed to wake him and took him to hospital turns out he'd had a seizure the blood was from where he bit his tongue he continued to have seizures for a few years after that causing a lot of permanent mental issues such as memory loss turns out quitting alcohol cold turkey after being a moderately heavy alcoholic for years will frick you up alcohol withdrawal is a bee for anyone wondering alcohol is one of few things an addict should never under any circumstance quit cold turkey always seek medical assistance to do so almost eight years i have heard a lot kid hiding under the bed while daddy punches mommy i saved a man from suicide and possibly from killing others in the process lots of others had a van hit a guy on a motorcycle he went through the windshield and out the back window thanks for doing your work not a 9-1-1 operator but when i worked for the district attorney we had a case of domestic violence where the perpetrator was holding a baby only a few weeks old and threatening to twist his freaking head off if his wife didn't come back home the mother screams as she begged and pleaded for him not to hurt the baby stayed with me for a long time eventually the police arrived baby was returned to mother and the perpetrator went to prison even though i knew the outcome after the fact we were evaluating the tape for evidence listening to the tape was difficult a happy ending finally not the dispatcher but the caller my younger sister's bedroom door was locked and she hadn't responded to my mom yelling from downstairs to do chores maybe an hour later my dad got some tools to unlock the door from my room i heard as he finally got it open and went in i heard a crash and thought he'd fallen and he immediately yelled for my mom my brother came out of his room to see what was going on and my mom came in a towel having just gotten out of the shower in her room my parents started screaming her name over and over my mom screamed to call 9-1-1 i emerged from my room really it was like 10 seconds since the beginning walked by the doorway without looking in and said i'll do it i walked downstairs and out the front door because their screams filled the house i called 9-1-1 and when a woman answered i said i need an ambulance i could still hear my parents hysterical screaming she asked the reason for needing an ambulance and i said my sister was unconscious in her bedroom she asked if i knew why howe and i didn't i hadn't even looked in the bedroom when i walked by i learned later my dad had tried to revive her with cpr the operator asked for a crosstreat and i hesitated i wasn't sure what crosstreat meant though my guess would have been correct my brother came outside and i handed the phone to him hoping he could answer more clearly i felt guilty for not having all the answers not using the landline not looking in the bedroom to even see what was wrong with her to better describe to the operator i thought maybe if i hadn't hesitated about the cross street help could have arrived earlier and my sister would have lived now i know that isn't true but it bothered me a long time a movie called life in a day came out in 2011. it is about people all around the world living their life on a specific day by coincidence it is the exact day my sister died it was comforting in a way to see what other people were doing that day they were having a good day and the world didn't stop this is awful you can't give yourself grief for not knowing how to handle a horrible situation like this though my sister is a 9-1-1 dispatcher she went on leave after this a man called in saying he had shot his daughter and her six kids age infant to 11 he said that when police arrived he would kill himself dispatch arrived and he killed himself in front of them police found the daughter out back they think she was leading him away from the house and kids kids were throughout the house they had tried to hide the 11 year old was with the baby no one knows why and it was a small town it hit everyone in the community pretty hard something similar happened with the family my parents knew the dad had disappeared for something like two months before he was found living at a campground well he went home and a few months later there is a call to 9-1-1 from the dad saying he was reporting a murder suicide at his address hung up and killed himself my mom has been a police dispatcher 30 years and i worked as one for the same large metropolitan agency about 12 years ago when i was 18 for three years i took a call from a person who witnessed a horrifying mva the driver was trapped in the car and it was on fire she was a larger woman and managed to unbuckle herself but the door was jammed shut i listened to her screaming as she burned alive while the witness wailed and tried to pull her from the window she did not survive i had a suicidal man call and say i just don't want my kids to find me loud gunshot line goes silent i sat on the line 30 minutes until the unit got on scene the crap still haunts me i quit because of how poorly the agency was run not how taxing the job is though it definitely gave me a thick skin having a 5-second 9-1-1 call like that is just horrifying i always read through the responses to see if i'll ever meet the person who took my call thank you all for what you do every day i couldn't imagine being a 9-1-1 operator disclaimer not me but my ex-wife she was the one who took the call about a 13-year-old having hanged himself from a third-story balcony the boy's mom called it in when she came home from work and saw her kiddo dead hanging from the lanai some things you don't forget this is one of them she my ex took a week off of work and cried a lot our kids are 13 and 15. hope your ex is okay i was on the third side of a call as a firefighter responding to a report of a house fire in a very rural area it was about a 30-minute run for us and we would be meeting up with another station coming from the opposites direction at about the same time about 15 minutes into the drive dispatch came over the radio saying that the call came from inside the house upon arrival we roll up to multiple police cars and two ambulances on scene meaning someone knows something we don't the house is sealed up with heavy black smoke puffing from every tiny opening this is a telltale sign that the complementalized gases are ready to explode backdraft once oxygen is added to the superheated environment it was mid-january minus 20 degrees celsius outside and the roof was steeply pitched and made of steel that happened to be covered in ice basically we weren't ventilating from above as we would prefer we took a front window and made entry through a side door found two bodies and got them out before the place erupted we dumped water into it for hours but without proper ventilation we simply couldn't dissipate the heat fast enough to prevent it from reigniting we found out the next morning that a dude had shot up his family and set the place on fire we had to go back later that day and find the third body who looked more like the remains of luke skywalker's aunt and uncle after the storm stormtrooper attack she was in her 90s and the one who had called 9-1-1 not a dispatcher but i was a police officer in a rural area worked night shift mainly one night i responded to a call of a head on motor vehicle accident occupants trapped in their vehicle no further details it was winter and the mile post was a good 10-15 miles away and even running code 3 the adrenaline dump doesn't get you there fast enough it wasn't snowing down in the valley but when i emerged up on the flats i hit a wall of snow and ice covered roads at a 110 mile per hour i was lucky and was able to slow down before i became the next crash i was the first to arrive on scene one vehicle suv on its side and the other a truck was part way in the ditch but upright i ran straight to the suv where i noticed a woman screaming with a baby they had managed to crawl out of the vehicle with the help of other drivers who had stopped i noticed the driver was pinned under the dash and front fender arm partially hanging out of the window unresponsive bystanders told me there was a 12 year old girl trapped inside the vehicle the mother was screaming to the girl inside mommy as her baby i climbed on top of the rolled vehicle and opened a back door so i could get access to the girl i climbed inside where she was laying head-to-head with the driver if you can imagine the chaos of the interior of a wrecked vehicle i remember climbing over her the stench of death and the to-go box of whatever they just ate scattered across the inside i told her to take my hand everything would be okay i'll never forget reaching down as her small bloody hand extended up to take mine all i could do was keep her focused on me the driver her father dead just inches from us i checked his pulse but there was nothing i comforted the girl while my partner pried open the rear hatch so we could get her out once she was out of the vehicle i went back to the driver from the outside driver's area he was clearly gone two pinned to attempt cpr his internal injuries had to be severe the woman his wife was screaming and crying she went over and bend down yelling at him you can't be gone you can't be gone this isn't happening i tried to comfort her and i put my arm on her and walked her in the opposite direction i told her we were doing everything we could she was mad upset confused she yelled at me you aren't doing anything you aren't helping him she was in shock and didn't want to believe her husband was gone i often remember that night and her voice i'm not ashamed to admit i have cried many times over that call i am thankful the children and the wife made it out alive as well as the other driver who caused the accident i always wonder how that family has moved on and how the girl is doing for some reason this one just sticks with me not a 9-1-1 operator i really wished i was so i could have helped the poor lady i used to work for a canadian call center that took american cellular calls we were 611 or something on their phone some poor lady hit my line i could hear her scream and cry for help i heard a man trying to break in the door to get to her and wood splintering with each hit all i could do was say mom you dialed 611 please please dial 9 1 1 it will work even if your service is cut off do it now 9-1-1 then i hung up so she wouldn't waste more time with me that call really made me appreciate 9-1-1 service workers hats off to you folks who can handle that holy frick we still don't know if she called 9-1-1 in time [Music] while working as an emt i was held at gunpoint and spent two hours trying to convince the guy he still had a reason to live he only took me in the paramedic hostage so the police couldn't storm the place he just wanted someone there when he was going to kill himself when it was coming to an end it seemed like he had calmed down and we were all going to walk out of his house just fine then he just said i'm sorry and he was gone just like that had a man call and simply say there's a body in the backyard gunshot wound and hang up turns out shortly after the call he actually made it his body it still weeds me out being the last person to ever talk to that man i know nothing else about him and never will i've had quite a few one that sticks with my was a clinic calling for a month old child having some breathing trouble i asked to speak to dad and heard the baby crying in the background sent everyone out and thought all was well i hung up the phone and continued on with my shift the baby died hours later the parents weren't really able to care for the child to begin with and they didn't believe in medical care that is up until their baby died it angers me that people who don't believe in medical care can have children babies are so delicate they need professionals involved my dad was working at the emergency call center but was not the one taking calls looked at the monitor and saw his father's address with a possible doa not a great way to learn your father has died i work in law enforcement and part of a further education in my line of work i got to visit the comm central during my visit i got to listen into what one of the operators were doing for a good hour first 30 minutes were minor stuff like lost animals and a few people leaving information about possible crimes then a so-called priority one call came in all i could hear from the caller's end was a woman screaming at the top of her lungs that she's gonna die and loud crashing noises in the background the operator tried to calm her down but she was in such a state of distress that she wasn't listening to him this went on for five minutes and then the banging stopped and she calmed down a minute passes then you can hear a chainsaw rev up and a giant cash before she screams out and then lets out a loud gurgling noise the call cut after that so we had just the cops radio communication to go by but they had arrived the guy surrendered to them instantly and then found the woman with her throat cut so deeply from the chainsaw her neck was exposed they had no chance of saving her holy freaking crap a woman called in to say her house was on fire she was trapped in the corner of her living room and couldn't get out the stairway was filled with fire and smoke and there was also fire coming in through her windows from the floor below she was screaming for help she died on the phone i think four people died in the apartment building total i've had plenty of chilling calls from the screams of people finding their loved ones dead to injuries more gory than anything out of the worst horror movies one that i've personally taken that stays with me is a lady who called and her first words were my husband has a gun under his head luckily she was able to give me her address before he walked into the room and she told him she was on the phone with his mom i quickly had to shift to asking questions in a yes or no fashion to get the officers the information they needed while trying to keep her looking inconspicuous he got suspicious that she was on the phone with said that he would 911 the trigger if it was the police to her credit she did a fantastic job of staying relatively calm and quickly giving me a yes or no in between keeping conversation with him to keep him distracted i sat and listened to them argue about i'll give you the gun only if you give me the phone for a while and then i could hear a struggle for the phone and the line went dead i sat there for a minute with an overwhelming feeling of having no idea what happened next or of him seeing that call could have caused the death of either one or both of them you did a great job very clever and adaptable i'll add another one i was fairly new and got stuck working the overnight after a full shift already around 6am i got a frantic call from a woman she stated she woke up to find her boyfriend passed out on the couch went through the typical questions with her yes he is a drug user no he is not breathing i was about to give her medical instructions when i heard her scream no baby get out of the room get out i asked who it was and she told me it was their six-year-old daughter mum was in a state of shock before that but the remainder of the call i spent listening to her whale while she waited for someone to help i've had almost the exact same situation except in this case a small child died of illness and not an overdose i'll never forget her mother screams either omg that poor mom that poor baby poor you my grandmother was a 9-1-1 operator in a small town in california back in the early 1980s she was the only one on duty and received a call from her good friend's husband he told my grandmother that he and his wife had fought and that he had a gun to his head she did her best to stall him and talk him down but he unfortunately pulled the trigger before the police could get to him she then heard her friend screaming as she found his body what was the most 911 call you've ever received no longer a dispatcher but was for 15 years i answered a 9-1-1 call from a cell phone that only indicated a sector direction the call was coming from in the tower that the call was bouncing off of basically no valid location information initially it sounded like a but dial situation but i stayed on the line a little longer trying to refresh the call for better location information as i was listening it sounds like a loud tv and some muffled noises in the background so i stayed on longer than i would have i was finally able to narrow the location down to about three football fields and searched in-house records for the phone number at this point there was still no communication except in the background then i heard what was one single clear call for help i couldn't tell if it was the tv or a person though i already entered a vague call to check the area and kept updating officers with further info eventually we narrowed it down to one road that had one house surrounded by businesses so officers went to the house found that there was a teenage boy and a little brother or sister that were held tied up by parents i tried to search for the news report but can't recall enough details thankfully i didn't give up one the call too soon and the children were rescued thank you just because a person calls doesn't always mean they can talk you are a hero it's hard to say we get vague calls all the time and people hardly answer when you call back mostly send the police and that's it luckily sometimes people will say they shot him or something along those lines then hang up my favorite type of caller you don't need the address just fricking send the cops already but i work in bank security but receive alert line calls from bank staff which is essentially the same as 911 operators would receive i had a call at midnight and it was this guy who started off by saying is this a secure line i think they're listening uh yes sir this line is secure okay i just can't be too careful listen i think they're onto me weird things are happening at work i'll get weird pop-ups on my computer on all other computers i don't know what to do i okay so just take a breath and talk me through what's going on strange things i don't know i'm not sure too many coincidences they don't make sense i think my bosses are planning something but i won't contact the police why won't you contact the police i think they're involved and they won't listen to me anyway something's happening but i don't know what it is yet then i heard in the background what the heck are you doing down here come back to bed give me the phone he argued for a second and gave over the phone hi sorry about this i'm frank's wife i don't know what he's been telling you but he's just very stressed at the moment don't worry about anything he's said he told me he was going to get water and i found him downstairs calling you guys i'll make sure he's okay thanks bye i'm okay take care of him bye was very surreal sounds like frank was having a delusion some rambling followed by a clear there's a bomb on the train followed by a click middle of the night when it's supposed to be quiet and i was only working there for about a month at that point as a railway police dispatcher definitely got me from feeling groggy to fully panicked in half a second pulled out the emergency procedure guideline for bombs got started on all steps to start shutting down the entire division as a precaution and started pulling the call details told my one colleague about the call so he could take over the other inbound calls started to pick up the phone to call up other departments and the inbound phone rings again my colleague who was much older and experienced told me hold up let me take this call a few seconds pass and he screams out is this jeremy he waits a few seconds and slams the phone down hey oh yeah that's jeremy he's actually a frequent caller who's institutionalized sometimes he gets away and runs off to the nurse's station and calls us happens every now and then cross reference the phone number and log the call under jeremy not 9-1-1 but search and rescue radio in alaska late one evening in a winter blizzard i got the call coast guard we are going over that's it i never heard from the ship again i did however find some other helpful souls and background info after being in the water almost six hours in 34 degree water we picked them up all four lived one of my most intense nights ever former volunteer empty here we kept getting toned out one afternoon for stomach pain took forever to get a volunteer crew together to respond to this call turned out to be a middle schooler with a gunshot wound to the abdomen the kid that want to called the dispatcher that he accidentally shot his friend with his dad's unsecured gun my mother used to be a 999 uk 911 operator she says the vegas was heavy breathers as you couldn't tell whether it was someone injured who couldn't speak or just a pervert i volunteered for the samaritans suicide helpline and the number of pervs who called to get their jiggle on was truly astounding cheaper than the premium hotlines i guess 9-1-1 operator at a 40 officer department took a 9-1-1 call female caller get police over click i attempted callback no answer straight to voicemail looked up history with the phone number in our report system and neighboring city had contact with someone using that number just two months prior neighboring city does a check at the home and finds a vehicle that had gotten away from a police pursuit from our city earlier in the night we go to the location and recover the vehicle while the local department takes the person identified as the driver into custody on their local charges weird that it all stemmed from a less than three second phone call that's why they always at least try to teach us in poland that whenever you are calling emergencies the first thing you say is the address no hello no get xxx just say the address first just in case something happens 9-1-1 dispatcher nva here as far as vague goes probably when a passerby called about a man sitting on a curb looking lonely no description of the mail and no legit location caller i'm sitting at an intersection here in town and i saw this guy me okay sir did the man appear to be in distress or suspicious in any way caller no i don't think so but he seemed really lonely me uh do you want me to send a unit to check his welfare caller yes please i mean it may be nothing or he may be thinking about running into traffic and i think someone should talk to him me do you remember where you saw him caller no one occurred near my family member's house me hum okay what's that address caller gives address me any idea where in relation to the house caller no all the streets here look the same i'm from out of town me do you have a description of the mail is he wbh what he is wearing a caller no i didn't look at him really i just drove by and looked lonely me bash his head against console all units be on the lookout for a male sitting he may look lonely my parents were once a vague call on my phone i was driving them home from a wedding because they were way too inebriated to drive at one point my bf texted me so i handed my dad my phone to text him back somehow he managed to hit the emergency services button then yes so they pick up and i hear dad go lower than he hangs up so he gives the phone to my mom and emergency services called back i hear her say very loudly hello no i'm fine and i being what coerced knew at this point i've pulled over and wrestled the phone from her and then explained the situation i felt so bad for the operator not to sound insensitive in this very serious thread but i can only imagine the operator hearing a clearly drunk caller followed by a faint mom mo mom give me my pho give my phone back mom got one where a lady reported that her neighbors were running an illegal taco stand i have no idea what made it illegal neither did she the officers went and cleared immediately it was a party they were giving away free tacos had a woman on the line who was locked in a bedroom after getting into a physical fight with her boyfriend but had no idea where she was and she was incredibly difficult to understand i asked her if she was in a home or apartment she said apartment i told her to look out the window and tell me what she saw she said a red car and a blue car not much help there so i asked her how many stories the apartment complex had and she said three this was obviously not a lot to go on so i finally asked what the last thing she remembers seeing before they pulled into the apartment complex and she set a target i knew there was a target just outside our jurisdiction and a couple of three-story apartments near there but one in particular that we got called out to regularly so i dispatched police meanwhile the boyfriend was beating down the door literally and was about to get in so i knew it was urgent that we find her immediately i hoped with all my heart that i sent police to the right place when my officers pulled on scene they reported seeing a red and a blue car so i knew we were close but we still didn't know which apartment the boyfriend was about to burst in the room so she hid under the bed and when he finally broke down the door i told her to run toward the front door and to scream as loud as she could which were not really supposed to do because if they get hurt after you give them an order it can leave the pd liable but she was frozen and needed help and we needed to find her or at least maybe someone would hear her scream and call us with an address he came into the room she slid out from under the bed and ran to the front door screaming burst outside and my officers were right there turned out the reason she was so difficult to understand was because the bastard had knocked out her teeth i'm so glad you managed to help her my stepdad's fire station once got a call asking whether you should throw salt or sugar on a fire to put it out i'm not sure if the call was transferred or they'd called the station directly he asked why and they responded that her and her husband disagreed on it he asked if they had a fire and they said well yes but they were just wondering which to use he asked where and they said oh we're just behind the station to the east he looked over and could see flames rolling out of their kitchen window no i don't need you to put it out i just want to know which of these to use because driving that thing over here is really expensive guy called 9-1-1 and said there was a bomb at our local walmart very small town so we advised our offices and went through the standard procedure of advising walmart and having them clear out close the store in the meantime we called the phone company and did some tracking on the phone guy was fired from walmart that day and was picked up for making a terroristic threat fricked his life up doing that calling in is so much easier we get a slimmed down transcript of the call takers conversation on our computers when the call gets dispatched a ton of them are just caller requests ambulance to x location no further information which is fine because at least then they usually send a cop car along with us in case something sketchy is going on incorrect information is often way worse than no information because if it incorrectly comes over as something benign they send us a loan and we can end up alone on a scene that we should have police assistance on last week i had a fall from standing height leg injury turned out to be a shooting with a huge crowd of sketchy people on scene and not long before that we had an abdominal pain turn out to be a guy who got stabbed in the abdomen the abdominal pain dude wasn't lying just not specific enough to save his life if the stabber was still there not me but my friend's dad in a 999 emergency operator and he picked up a call the caller just said help and hung up by the time he sent the police the house fire had nearly burned the whole thing down oh no him in the army and work as a dispatcher on post what is your emergency silence but sounds of breathing on the phone hello mail i need you to send special forces to my house because my mom took something and ice and acting herself so what is your address and number we actually have a computer that tells us but we double check in case of faulty system mail i can't give you that information special forces is coming for us sir tell me about your mother in what way is she not acting herself male you already know you can see it on your computers can't you where is my mom mind you the mail sounds to be in adulthood and very slow slurred speech so you just said she wasn't acting herself so how do you even know that but ask me where she is male who male special forces already know hangs up i tried to call back but no response the caller wasn't even on post not an operator but an emt major respect for our operators as they have to get stories fourth or fifth hand and pieced together a narrative for us on the ground got a call for a sick person no other details except maybe an age arrived to find this guy very very dead in his backyard judging by the state of his body probably died four six hours earlier when i was actually a 9-1-1 operator we had a mentally ill guy calling about once or twice a month because he thought that his neighbors were putting poison gas through his vents however when he would call he would say they're doing it again and then hang up the first time i received the call i had no clue what was happening but since it was a fairly common occurrence the officers knew what was up a guy that lives in a very rural part of the county called once and said the kkk was going to kill him and then hung up it's very sad because when the sheriff's dept got out there there was a cross burning on his lawn as a former operator i can say the more details you give the better the agency can help you in a general sense however i do know that people are not always in a spot to give those details i've made a vague phone call before once i was going into shock from a bee sting i didn't know i was allergic until that moment i attempted to call nine one one and all i could manage was it up hello the operator asked me several pertinent questions but i couldn't remember my name or where i was so after a few seconds of the operator asking if i was okay i just hung up because i didn't know what to say they called back and i went through the same process i was scared because i knew i was in danger but my brain didn't know how to communicate that luckily the person whose house i was at gave me some benadryl and made the call for me she saved my life not 911 operator but firefighter got sent out to a major car accident however the info the caller gave was that it was on the highway anywhere between our town and a town 15 kilometers away we had three brigades respond and each searched a third of the highway with no accidents to be seen dispatch called the original caller back but they said they couldn't provide more info as they are out of the area now former medic here call from a nursing home that said patient in wheelchair located in the lobby with breathing difficulties shortly before getting on scene turns into a full arrest and upon my patient contact patient had been dead for at least a couple hours went from innocuous to dead guy in the lobby of the nursing home real quick i'm a a co-worker 911 the call went something like this 9-1-1 where is your emergency coma caller provides address and then bang the guy shot himself in the head behind the barn and wanted first responders to find him before his family did she said she stayed on the line and listened to him gurgle and struggled to breathe for a few minutes until ms arrived jesus christ that's awful to have the mental fortitude to stay on the line with him while he's bleeding out is incredible i'm sure she is pretty scarred from that experience some girl calls saying her car was stolen i'm asking questions i ask which direction she last saw it headed she says we are passing northern boulevard now wtf i ask if she's in the car and she says yes stolen car call is now a kidnapping call i'm asking her more questions police are scrambling i then hear say slow down baby you're scaring me kidnapping call has now de-escalated to an angry girlfriend call police still find them and make sure everything's okay i just laugh at the idea of him sitting there quietly while she describes to the police which direction they are headed know me but a good buddy is a police officer and god radioed to look for a shirtless hispanic man in a blue pickup truck not that vague but after chasing him for over an hour and involving 30 police cars over three different jurisdictions it was a guy with no driver's license and not the guy they were looking for not sure if this counts but my friend's dad used to be a cop and he got this radioed into him from a colleague injured woman in my town name need backup nothing else he tried responding back and got nothing he eventually got into contact with him a few days later and i guess a woman had faked an injury and ended up attacking the officer i was a caller here but i was sick and on a multitude of drugs my doc had prescribed me a woman came to my and my partner's house saying someone in the alley needed help and she was too scared to step in i called 911 as my partner headed out to see what he could do i followed shortly after the woman who knocked quickly vanished i asked for police but was absolutely no help to the 9-1-1 operator me i need the police someone's hurt 9-1-1 who's hurt me i don't know oh i hear yelling 9-1-1 who's yelling me i don't know 9-1-1 what are they saying me i don't know 9-1-1 is it a man or a woman me gosh i don't know it just kept going with me always answering i don't know over and over the police had no idea what they were walking into when they arrived but it was a kidnap victim who'd escaped by jumping out of his own suv that they'd taken him in and hightailing in into the alley to hide get help he came back to our house six weeks later with a box of chocolates to thank us for helping him i don't know is still a valid answer for us and i'd take and i don't know any day overall why are you asking me all these questions or worse the caller hanging up thanks for staying on the line and trying your best not me but heard of a case where a domestic violence victim called emergency and it went somewhat like this 911 what's your emergency hi i'd like to order pizza you realize you've called emergency yes can i get to super supreme 911 operator realizes what's going on are you under duress and unable to speak but you need police help yes that's right my address is x how long until the pizza arrives 10 minutes the pizza didn't show but cops did and the abusive boyfriend was separated from his knife i think that was on a tv ad about domestic violence awareness i remember hearing the same one that crap got to me not an operator but many dispatch systems force you to file the call under a category i can't tell you how many times i've been sent to the sick person probably the most confusing cause to deal with were the ones from cars auto darling when they detected a collision they only came through on certain call terminals set setup to also receive the gps data from the vehicle but would otherwise come through like any other 999 call you'd essentially be placed in a conversation with a probably half concussed person very confused as to why their car dashboard was now talking to them many people didn't even know their car had the feature built in i was a vague call once but apparently not that vague since they figured it out in a damned hurry i was three i had just learned about 9-1-1 i vaguely remember wanting to test it to make sure it worked i called breathed for a few seconds giggled and hung up feeling that perhaps i me i i'd have done something wrong i ran and hid behind the couch in hindsight this may have been a particularly boneheaded move even for a three-year-old because one the couch was in the middle of an open floor plan and two both my parents were sitting on the couch at the time it was the equivalent of a cartoon fat person trying to hide behind a tree if they were trying to hide from someone right on the other side of the tree and also you know i kinda lived there they'd find me eventually at this point the phone rings as my mom tells the story the dispatcher was quite straightforward dispatcher hello this is 911 returning your call what is your emergency mom blank confusion dispatcher do you by any chance have any small children in your residence mom slowly turns around like a possessed person to make direct eye contact with me yes yes we do i will speak with him it was not a pleasant conversation not a 9-1-1 operator but i recived a call from a hidden number the man on the other side said it was rape and hung up on me yeah i wouldn't be able to sleep that night me a 9-1-1 dispatcher what's your location caller says name of town me okay but where are you see my room m all right but where is that see my house not 9-1-1 but funny af from one of my friends that is a ranger they received a call from a guy who got lost in the mountains they asked him can you tell us where you are he said next to a tree he was not kidding weird part is asking a lost person where they are half of them qualify as too vague to be useful to anyone people will start talking while the phone is still ringing and i'll answer in the middle of a story when you ask people what address they are at you can get things like the name of the city the corner store sue city of any other random generic name they decide for that part of the city and my favorite my home and at my friend so and so's house like that helps at all other fun ones include calling cause they were assaulted by a roommate lover relative and all they'll do is yell to hurry up without ever telling you where the frick they are or their apartment number if you do manage to figure it out and they don't know the last name of this person just some vague crap like henry they also can't give you any details of what color or type of clothing this person has on and if you ask if they are white black hispanic they'll say yeah it's not a yes or no question then you have the i'm on the interstate and they can't tell you which direction they're going and give you locations that are physically impossible like eastbound on i-95 and it's somewhere between these two mile markers that are 20 miles apart for a reckless driver they saw 10 20 freaking minutes ago it's red don't know if it's a truck sub or sedan didn't look at the license plate but it's super important we stop them oh and they pointed a gun at the caller i was once written up for a call about prostitution predominantly black neighborhood at a corner store he's a h that's it wouldn't give me any physical description at all and got p when i asked how he knew i asked what she was doing exactly to make him think that he hangs up and calls the chief's office before the call is even cleared yep i had to send a cop out to essentially harass all the black women outside the store minding their own business i'm called to the office and written up for doing my job most people assume you know every building ever erected or demolished no i don't know where the old kmart is just tell me you're at the freaking best buy it's been best buy for over nine freaking years today's winner was a 9-1-1 call and she's very mellow and half-paying attention to the phone even though she called me caller i you're looking for melvin generic but name 911 is this someone there with you what address are you at caller no you're looking for melvin he got warrants and i know where he at 9-1-1 fine what's melvin's middle name or birthday call now angry i don't know you're the one after him not me 9-1-1 is melvin wanted for something he did in our city caller no he did it two cities over okay is melvin here in our city caller no he's somewhere in about seven states away what the frick i-95 like most odd-numbered highways runs north south not east west i had a person with a heavy hispanic accent call from a 9-1-1 phone saying they were lost in the forest and very cold they said they had been using the city lights to find their way but the snow was blocking it out and they were scared and then they disconnected not a dispatcher but an emt responding to a call that goes over as anything really vague can suck best example for me so far we get dispatched for the sick person guy just doesn't feel good not enough details to give us more to save the details he was apparently having an aortic dissection usually when somebody has one of these they aren't found alive he actually lived through it although all said had something like a 15 chance of survival from a rival to discharge from rehab guy has an angel or the devil himself watching his back there suspicious person calls as in they can't say why he's suspicious just something about him is he looking into houses no is he checking door handles on cars no then what's suspicious about him you just have a bad feeling i wasn't a 9-1-1 operator but i was a clerk in a military emergency room and this probably fits the spirit of the question i got a call around 2 3 a.m where person just shouted send an ambulance now and hung up before i could say anything i had no contact with local emergency services i actually had no contact with the military emergency services either basically i just shrugged and told my nurses that something crazy this way comes about 20 minutes later a girl that worked in the general medicine clinic with my wife came in with her toddler she was the one on the phone she was a corman navy nurse essentially she worked in this hospital and should have known i didn't have that ability she also lived on base a five-minute walk from my window the reason for the visit she picked up her son in the wee hours of the morning and he collapsed on her shoulder he was sleepy this wasn't even her only child she had two other older children sent home as a well-baby check first responders what is the worst injury you have seen that was caused by the stupidest and most easy to avoid event i was a firefighter and we were called to a vehicle fire at midnight in a rural area if we get there and sure enough there was a pickup truck fully engulfed this wasn't the usual engine compartment fire the whole truck was roaring i was with the nozzleman at the time on my engine which meant my job was to be the guy spraying water on the fire as i got closer to the pickup i noticed a god awful smell i was relatively new so i couldn't place it but just knew it was putrid my heart immediately sunk when i remembered there was a missing girl case in our area people often stash evidence inside cars and burn the whole thing to get rid of evidence guns clothes even bodies as i'm putting out the fire i'm dreading what i'll find something was in the truck bed the fact that the truck's owner wasn't on scene made me more nervous fast forward and the fires out turns out the truck bed was filled dozens of pumpkins thankfully no bodies but we had no idea where the driver was a few days later we heard from the cops that just before we arrived at the fire a lone guy showed up at the air with massive full body burns turns out that as this guy was driving his pumpkins to a nearby farmer's market he hit something in the road his gas gauge went to empty and he smelled gas coming from his truck the hero of the story crawled under his truck to assess the damage and use the only light source he had a bit lighter someone saw the fire and drove him to the air some separate passerby was the one who actually called in the fire tldr if you think you have a gas leak don't use a lighter as your light source some guy decided kicking a running mower blade that was jammed up was a great idea he was nice enough to bring his foot in though in a cooler full of beer my boss's husband was mowing the lawn when the blades got jammed decided to unclog it with his bare hand lost the tips of all of his fingers can't decide so i'll take two worst injuries bikers who thought going 300 kilometers per hour on a german autobahn is a good idea because it's legal stupidest a guy who climbed a fence to sneak into an open-air concert his engagement ring got caught on the top of the chain-link fence when he jumped down which de-gloved his finger and part of his hand it was past 10 p.m so the gates were open and the entrance was free an eight-year-old who got his legs chopped off by an industrial-sized lawnmower his parents wanted him to help out around the neighborhood he hit a curb and tilted himself out of the driver's seat and promptly got run over probably shouldn't give an eight-year-old a two-sided lawnmower shouldn't let an eight-year-old use a lawnmower in general i work in a hospital there's a lot of stupid crap i have seen climbing things and falling off them in a big one skateboarding without helmets i know helmets look embarrassing when skateboarding but a guy came off his board and was in an induced coma for a week after cracking his head open ffs my mom nearly died because she wasn't wearing a helmet while biking seeing my dad on his hands and knees screaming desperately into my mom's ears trying to wake her up was the best helmets are that five-year-old me ever got there was an suv full of teenagers driving down the highway in busy traffic they are driving pretty aggressively they try to pass a truck but the truck is towing a trailer and can't slow down quickly enough to let them pass before oncoming traffic gets close so they slow down and try to make a second pass the 15 year old in the back seat decides to pull his pants down and hang his butt out and moon the other car once they passed they overcorrected and rolled the kid doing the mooning was ejected and left half his brains and his left arm in a 75-foot line down the middle of the highway 75-foot line down the middle of the highway i didn't invent the phrase meat crayon for road accidents but this was the first in this thread that reminded me of it it's grim as frick i'm a paramedic saw a woman very messed up due to the lack of wearing a helmet on a job site a big metal beam fell on her head and then landed on her legs below the knee ended up having one leg with a completely broken set of bones beneath the knee tibford for those keen to the lingo she was super disoriented and had memory problems while i was taking care of her would forget everything every five-ish minutes and would want to take the splinting off her leg when that happened pretty crazy this submission in a nutshell were your freaking helmets people i met the guy while i was in the hospital that was getting out after suffering a stab wound to his leg i asked him what happened and he told me that his friend stabbed him with a carving knife i asked him why he would do something like that and he replied we were both drunk and decided to see if i could feel it at least he had a sense of humor about it a guy i used to know had a similar story about a house party where somebody got shanked just for the heck of it i'm pretty sure it was also in his leg though it's possible i've made up that detail it wasn't a kitchen knife though it was some kind of personal defense knife not sure if it was folding or fixed blade or what anyway moral of the story is drunk people are morons my dad is a police officer and in the first few weeks he was working he had two really bad accident calls the first one was on a local highway where a guy had lost control of his u-haul and flipped it he wasn't wearing a seat belt and was ejected he landed most likely already dead and the truck came to rest on his head only his head this other ones is more gruesome a homeless man was sleeping under garbage when a garbage truck drove onto him trying to get closer to the dumpster i know this has been said many times i think even in deadpool but he described it as if you ran over a tube of toothpaste the top popped in the bottom was completely flat ah and i wish i didn't read the toothpaste analogy my cousin is an emt and he said one of the nastiest scenes he came upon was a car accident in which the passenger had both of her legs up on the dash airbags deployed causing severe fractures on both of her ankles and pushed her knees into her face causing breaking her eye socket he said she was fully conscious when he arrived and in incredible pain if i remember correctly she survived and was expected to make a full recovery he has a lot of crazy stories mostly m and drunk drivers though never putting my legs on the dash again i guess 25 years in the fire service pick one uh dropping your crack pipe into your bed and burning off all your skin and a lot of flesh b getting drunk and hitting a tree sideways with your grand cherokee so hard that the frame rails met on the other side oh and not being identified for four days because all you had was faked c stopping your car on the side of i-95 to pee at 2am getting out on the traffic side and getting waffled by a truck seriously freaking drunk drivers nothing beats getting out of bed at 1am spending five hours watching the statis do their investigation then going to work on two hours sleep here's one from within the last year that i didn't have to deal with directly sambhatol walked into traffic for a suicide at 5am on 95 in greenwich ct got himself flattened but the trucker didn't notice and traffic kept running him over until nine i went over the smear around 6 30 and noticed the clothes everywhere four hours of the nyc commuter rush hour drove over that guy's carcass a theater was being renovated the theater was designed for a specific show and that show left after something like a 15-year run one of the design quirks of the theater was a concrete basement underneath the stage where machinery would push up some pretty impressive set changes from below this means the stage had giant open holes in it after all that machinery and stuff was cleared out of the basement the holes in the stage opened up to a 30-foot drop with bare concrete beneath the crew who was tearing down the stuff on the stage took some precautions to make sure nobody fell into those holes they put plywood over the holes and set up caution cones all around them when they finished tearing down all the stuff on the stage the last things remaining were those cones and plywood someone picked up all the cones and it was our future patients job to pick up the plywood these were long sheets of plywood too big to just throw over his shoulder so he just picked up one side of the plywood sheet and started walking forward pushing it along the stage floor he never even saw the hole he fell through because the plywood he was pushing blocked his view of his own feet he fell 30 feet and tumbled on the way down landing directly only his outstretched hands he had multiple nasty compound fractures in both arms luckily the shattering bones of his arms broke a lot of the momentum so when his head smashed into the concrete it wasn't enough to kill him it knocked him unconscious and knocked out all of the teeth on one side of his head it also crushed and dislocated his jaw the radial ulna fractures were the worst his hands just hung limply with gore everywhere and his bones clearly exposed on both forearms he woke up while we were prepping him for ambulance transport he mumbled something to us but his speech was grumbled and fricked mostly due to his injury but also due to the spinal immobilization we put on him which tucks underneath the chin he kept mumbling mahara after a while i realized he was trying to tell us that his hands hurt which makes sense you know considering the circumstances if he fell 30 feet onto concrete then he was dang lucky just to have survived firefighter here teenage boy duct and rolled from a car travelling 40-ish mph because of b got into the car and he was allergic to bees obligatory not a first responder but my dad was in the 1970s one of the stories he told me was he was called to an early morning accident on the 101 where a drunk driver got on an off ramp and hit another car head-on both the driver and the passenger and the right-of-way car went hearing their seat belts the driver was impaled on the column of the steering wheel and the passenger was launched through the windshield and then skid on his head both dead at the scene and the drunk driver totally fine since was so drunk he basically went ragdoll upon impact i'm trying to remember when seatbelts then shoulder belts became ubiquitous and then mandatory sometime in the 70s i'd guess i bought a new car in 1979 with automatic seat belts shoulder belt that's never caught on m supervisor of a well-known party campus of all the calls with shface patience the winner is a freshman who drank one beer and attempted to slide down the railing of his fourth floor dorm stairwell only to fall five stories upside down onto the concrete basement floor with only his head as a cushion on arrival the pool of blood twice his size gave me no hope when i reached down to check his pulse to my surprise he not only survived his aiku hospitalization he sat next to me on the first day organic chemistry a year later this is why one of many reasons i don't drink and never will thankfully i did not see it as our response is over the phone bill we got a call from a car that had done a rollover and no one was responding so we got police out there asap at some point a bystander came to the car and said there was no one inside which was weird because someone had to have been in there at some point for it to crash right well about 10 minutes later the bystander came back to say he'd found the driver or at least half of him we had to call the police back and let them know the driver was bisected at the waist later on the bystander reported he found the torso as well bad day to be a good samaritan for him i think some of the other people in the office were speculating it was a murder cover-up but he probably just didn't have his seat belt on if your car rolls over and half of you is flying out the window that's something that happens i'm not really a first responder but i was actually just thinking of this the other day i know a family in my small town that recently lost their son in a car accident the son and his girlfriend were just driving around late at night on the roads around their farm that they have driven on hundreds of times they got to talking or something and he missed a turn having to swerve and tipping his truck over he wasn't wearing his seatbelt so he was thrown out the window and smashed by the truck killing him instantly his girlfriend was wearing her seatbelt and didn't even have a scratch on her the truck itself was totally drivable it was kind of dented on the side that it was landed on but a little hammering out and you wouldn't even know this car was in an accident but yet he was killed moral of the story were your seat belt responded to a young guy that fell out of the shower when he slipped he impaled a wooden toilet plunger into the side of his chest underneath his armpit it was literally halfway down the wood into his body dude was standing in the living room when we got their plunger and all how he was alive i did not know our mouths were open after going in the home had to put him sideways on the stretcher in a position of comfort poor guy was just showering i was skimming saw shower slipped and toilet plunger and was expecting it to have gone up his butt accidentally but this was worse than a colon puncture i was at work sitting there with my boss this guy comes running in our office and cries for help talking about his friend standing outside we walk out and see another young man holding his hand covered in blood and missing one and a half fingers we of course help him having a first aid kid and luckily my boss being well taught in first aid he then got transported by a helicopter but the interesting thing is how he got his injury apparently the guys were having a barbecue and he took a circular saw to cut open their buns i did this so often it never went wrong later learnt that they were able to save at least one of his fingers that's the most overkill way to open a bun that i can imagine the worst injury i've seen caused by something stupid was a man who crashed into a tree on the side of the highway he had a nice gouge in his scalp and totaled his car the reason he did this he imagined the exit was about half a mile earlier than it was and tried to merge off onto the grass he was also high as frick on whippets really strange to find an entire box of n02 canisters in someone's passenger seat and an empty whipped cream dispenser which is the stupidest drug i can think of besides huffing paint gunshot wound to the head of a child under 10 his parents left a .40 caliber glock on a coffee table the brand being notable only because they lack the typical safety switch he did not make it and both parents were arrested i've seen a lot of gory crap online in my time and some example in real life but that is the worst and all because these morons left a loaded chambered gun with no safety at any level absolute stupidity without even considering the father of the child was a convicted felon i have the sudden urge to go to my kid's school track him down and give him a hug and since the kid's dad is eventually going to inherit some guns him and i need to have a serious chat about gun safety those guns will be in a safe and loaded safety zone not my story but one that my paramedic dad has told me a couple times a lady was standing under a massive oak tree in her yard after a nasty storm had damaged it one of the limbs as thick as the trunk on a normal street tree was cracked and this lady was just staring up at it trying to figure out what to do when it broke off and crushed her apparently it absolutely pancaked her torso head but left her limbs just fine my dad describes it as exactly like a bug's bunny cartoon dudes too neglected underfed unknown at large pit bulls were fighting over the unspayed female dog dude stepped in the middle and had his bottom lip entirely removed to the gum line he was also on a lot of blood thinners he then pulled his concealed carry weapon and shot the dog hitting it the stomach i felt so bad for that dog for being owned by a freaking [ __ ] it's his fault his dog died i picked the dude's lip up off the ground and package it for transport dude bled all the freaking way to the level i trauma center an hour away we ran out of absorbents and had to use quick clot to get the bleeding stopped blood was running out the back of the ambulance that would have been a sight to see former paramedic saw the man lose his life after falling 12 feet 12 feet ain't that high but when you land wrong instant death if you work at any height wear a harness i always like to remind people the average human is just tall enough that if they stand up straight and fall rigidly forward or backwards onto solid cement they will gain just enough energy to impart a likely lethal blow apply this to things like curbs or other smaller surface areas and it is no contest that's how freaking fragile we are when it comes to gravity people i'm a cop about 445 in the morning we get a call of a burglary in progress now we get off at 630 and have a whole night of paper to write before we go home so we weren't exactly stoked to do this anyways i get there first and the two occupants come running out and say a dude was trying to break in and smashed a window to do it so they ran time thinking active burglary in progress so i get my buddy rolling code 3 in case this turns sideways we get the house surrounded and decide well frickin we got to approach somehow we look through the fence and see what looks like a person laying on the ground we make entry into the backyard and sure enough there's a person laying on the ground right by the rear door only now we can also see shattered glass and a massive amount of blood we push into the backyard and the guy is clearly dead medics on scene confirmed it after further inspection we realize that this clown broke the window and sliced his arm deep right where your bicep meets your forearm he then walked from that location to the rear door and tried to enter there for a long time by how much blood was pulled on the ground and on the door he ended up dying face up spread eagle right by the door the homeowners had no idea who he was i ended up going home before the whole thing was wrapped up and i never got confirmation on anything but our best guess was this knucklehead was so high on him he thought that this house was his and ended up smashing the window trying to get in when he couldn't open the door cut himself and just died i'm a cop scatter my phil is a firefighter but the area mostly is car accidents so many people have their lives ruined by speeding or driving drunk so many nine one one call for a guy with abdominal pain find out the guy had shoved an egg up his butt for sexual pleasure after he had concluded his self-love he couldn't extract the egg he grabs a spoon and tries to break the egg to get it out this really happened dude cuts open his rectum and eventually dies from complications all to save 50 on a reusable vibrating egg my mother was a police explorer in the 80s she later went on to being a 9-1-1 dispatcher she had to do a ride-along as part of police explorers or dispatch training can't remember the town she lived in has lots of gravel roads on a blistering and muggy iowa summer the ambulance gets called to a motorcycle crash there were speeding down the gravel and he was wearing shorts sandals and no helmet he was literally pasted across the gravel which acted like sandpaper his head split open and his brains were scattered like a gala her show and the smell is something my mom says she can still smell when she tells the story gently cooking brains in gravel mixed with the road dust and raw meat smell didn't help it was super humid too the girl riding with him lost 80 percent of her skin and broke basically everything she died in the hospital before her parents got there my mom made me swear to never ride motorcycles my buddy had a pizza truck hit him while on his bike destroyed his bike and safety gear but besides being in a lot of pain he was okay i've got one about a drunk driver which is incredibly stupid to me but this dude was pretty bad off he was driving on a major road through my hometown and i happened to be walking to a taco bell around 9pm so i kinda saw how it happened with a man in a large pickup truck going about 120 on this road and slamming into the back of a stopped suv who then in turn went spiraling from the force into someone driving on the opposite side of the road the truck didn't stop but somehow managed to 180 and go the opposite direction but drove this time into a ditch and crashed into a telephone pole i didn't really know which one to go for first so i chose the truck when i ran over and opened the driver's side door the guy was barely conscious and blood was everywhere the airbag didn't deploy when i got him to speak to me i noticed he had no teeth left as they were all over the ground or smashed i ended up pulling him out of the car and setting him upright using his phone to call the police and then his wife for his request i was 16 at the time with no phone of my own upon re-inspecting the car is when i noticed all of the alcohol spread out could kind of catch it on his breath but i was taken aback by the blood i guess i didn't really stick around too much longer after the fire department and professionals got there but i heard of it on the news later on no one else was hurt to my knowledge other than the guy a real miracle as the suv had a baby on board sign from what i remember no matter what never drink and drive personally speaking as a stupid person i nearly cut a chunk of my hand off because i was cutting carrots on a mandolin without using the guard i still have a scar and i haven't touched the dang thing since not a first responder but this reminds me of that one youtuber that stuck his head in a microwave and then filled it with cement like literally what did he expect to happen did he even know how cement works that it hardens anyways it was a waste of time for the first responders in my opinion had that guy been smarter the first responders could have had actually saved the life of someone who actually needed help rather than someone who self-inflicted pain upon themselves as soon as someone is described as a youtuber i instantly assume they are not all that bright guy wanted to see what a dong ring felt like so he used his wedding ring couldn't get it off and was ashamed to ask for help until it started turning black and blue and was in extreme pain either dude has giant hands or a goddamn spaghetti dong rolled up on a guy that had oven cleaner burns on his arms from the shoulder down he has schizophrenia and forgot to take his meds he took oven cleaner rubbed them on his arms sat in his recliner for two hours then called 9-1-1 all we could do is flush his arms with saline and dry bandage him before taking him to the hospital people are crazy well guy is schizophrenic obligatory not a first responder my brother was hanging out with our cousin on his birthday my brother decided to make a quick run to the store for some ice cream he got on his motorcycle and decided not to wear any gear since it was just a few blocks away you can see where this is going he lived in saint george utah at the time a popular activity there is sand dimming part of doing that is lowering the air pressure in the tires the motorcycle he took had tires like this he was going downhill when the motorcycle flipped forward launching him forward luckily he was thinking quick enough to cover his head with his arms his forearms got horrendous road rash bits of glass and asphalt had to be picked out which was the most painful part according to him he also landed on his knee and skinned it clear to the bone he only had a couple scratches on his head but his arms and right knee were messed up a passerby saw it called an ambulance and luckily one was nearby so he didn't have to wait long to this day he has big pink patches on his arms and his right knee is a little weaker than the other moral of the story even if it's just a couple blocks in town always wear proper gear also check the air pressure in your tires all the time i was waiting for the bus when i watched an accident happen woman waiting at a light has her vehicle rammed into by annette and a woman who was doing her makeup the vehicle got hit was a large suv and the vehicle that was hitting was a small sports car also the hitting vehicle basically ran under the other vehicle which meant makeup lady got her face gashed up pretty bad by the bumper of the suv like there was a flap of skin hanging off i've taken off my hoodie and i'm trying to staunch the blood and get her away from the possibly leaky vehicle when another voice starts coming from the car the woman had her kid in the car i should note the occupants of the suv were largely uninjured so i have to go back in and gather this woman's child who when i got her out proceeded to puke all over me not sure why but at least i was headed home anyway i was called as part of the investigation into her reckless driving charge if you are new to the channel you can subscribe i publish new videos every day until then check another video [Music] bye for now

Channel: Updoot Studios

Views: 423,743

Keywords: 911 calls, 911 calls disturbing, 911 calls funny, 911 calls scariest, 911 call pizza order, #updootst, updoot, updoot reddit, updoot everything, reddit on tap, toadfilms, pewdiepie, reddit, askreddit, funny reddit, reddit stories, top posts, reddit top posts, reddit cringe, comedy, reddit compilation, /r, r/, r/askreddit, top posts of r/, askreddit reading, best reddit posts, top posts of all time, people of reddit, askreddit question, ask reddit, subreddit, sub, reddit stories 2021

Id: mTAatIFYwoE

Length: 169min 49sec (10189 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 16 2021