Clark Regional Emergency Services Agency reported that so far, the text-to-911 program has gone well.
The agency publicly launched the program last week, announcing the capability which is intended to give those in an emergency situation who can’t talk on the phone the ability to send dispatchers a text message.
So far, dispatchers have sent and received more than 200 text messages over the past week, CRESA technical services manager Katy Myers said. The technology does not allow her to break down that number by conversations or sessions, which is a kink the agency is working out.
“I think that it is going fairly well,” she said. “It’s an adjustment on our end, getting used to a new way of gathering information.”
Myers said that in scanning the conversations from the past week, there were two incidents of people who were in emergency situations whom did not feel safe to make a phone call: an intruder and a suspicious person in the same vicinity as the reporting party.
Five people sent a text to test the system, about 15 appeared to have been made in error and the rest were situations that required emergency response but did not require texting, she said. In those instances, dispatchers encouraged the texters to instead call 911.
Because of the delay in typing a text message and a dispatcher reading and then replying to a message, CRESA encourages people to use the program, but with the reminder of “call if you can, text if you can’t.”
Along with Clark County, text-to-911 launched in six counties in Oregon: Multnomah, Washington, Clackamas, Clatsop, Columbia and Marion counties on Aug. 23.
