COLUMBUS – Franklin County residents with emergencies now have the option to text 911 instead of placing a call as the county on Wednesday joins about a dozen other Ohio counties allowing the emergency texts.
Officials say a call is still preferable but texting is an important option if someone is hiding during an emergency and it would be dangerous to be heard on the phone.
The Columbus Dispatch reports the $2.5 million program is funded by fees paid by device users on their monthly bills.
“Calling is better than texting because emergency dispatchers can get more immediate answers to questions from callers, listen for distress in voices, and learn background information that could assist first responders in a potentially life-threatening emergency,” said Franklin County Commissioner Marilyn Brown, who chairs the county-wide 911 Planning Committee.
Text-to-911 service is subject to cell signal availability and the system cannot currently handle photos, videos or emojis but officials hope to it possible to send pictures and videos in the future.
In the event a text does not go through, the caller should receive an automated bounce-back message indicating a delivery failure.
“Franklin County agencies…are so integrated through mutual aid that we needed a unified response to this, and we all worked together very well to make it happen,” said Westerville 911 communications manager Holly Wayt, president of the Association of Public Communications Officials International. “We all understood our collective responsibility to embrace this new technology and its public benefits.”\
Officials say the new technology will greatly assist victims who may be in a domestic violence situation, are hiding, or simply can’t make a phone call. It will also help the hearing-impaired, they said.
Text-to-911 works on cell phones, tablets and other devices with the capability of sending texts.
Dispatchers will see the text-to-911 messages in a similar fashion to what shows up on a smart-phone text chain and they will be able to text back specific questions to the sender. Agencies jointly developed pre-programmed responses aimed to address the text emergencies they receive and quickly ask for key information.