Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
Amanda Butterfield ReportingA Salt Lake woman happened upon a car wreck with two injured people. The woman had her cell phone, and called 9-1-1 for help, but no one answered. This is a problem Valley Emergency Communications Center has been dealing with.
Something bad has already happened if you're calling 9-1-1, but when no one answers and no help is on the way -- then it gets worse.
Janet: "I was frustrated, angry."
Janet was getting onto I-215 when she saw a car had crashed. She stopped, got out her cell phone and did what anyone else would have done.
Janet:"So I called 9-1-1, rang, hung up called back, rang."
By then others had stopped and it was clear two women in the crash needed help fast.
Janet: "They were in pain, one had seatbelt on, sterum hurt bad."
But after several calls, by several people, on different cell phones, no one could get any help.
Janet: "One of our friends were there. For them it rang 50 times, then said picked up and hung up on them."
The 9-1-1 calls should have been ringing through to VECC, but they weren't.
Mike Veenendaal, Valley Emergency Communications Center: "We're not sure why this didn't get through. THat is one we're going to look at."
When KSL notified Vecc of Janet's problem, they called in Qwest to help figure it out, and they found only one of Janet's calls on record.
Mike Veenendaal: "We found she had got through at 7:10 last night."
On the call history of Janet's cell phone, it's true, she did call at that time.
Janet: "The second 9-1-1 at 7:10 pm, and they finally picked up then."
But it's also true, she called two times before that, and why those calls aren't on record, is a bit concerning.
Mike Veenendaal: "What actually happened, we're not sure."
While Janet's intital call didn't make it through, fortunately someone elses finally did; and fortunately the two woman in the wreck didn't have life-threatening injuries and are going to be okay.
A spokesperson for VECC says over the weekend they had a similiar complaint of someone calling 911 on a cell and no response. This weekend VECC overhauled their phone system to avoid the problem.
If you ever have a similiar problem using your cell phone to call 911, and it keeps ringing, hang up and try again as many times as it takes. If you do finally get through, let the dispatcher know you couldn't get through at first, so they make note of it.
