911 flooded with new Christmas cellphone users

We previously had no doubt as to the boundless limits of human stupidity, but we're feeling pretty refreshed about all that now: apparently thousands of people on Christmas morning wake up to new cellphones and want to test it out, so they call the first number that comes to mind: 911 (what, 411 or 611 or moviefone wasn't good enough?). Apparently Californian emergency call centers on Christmas day have as much as a 50% non-emergency rate of callers just hanging up or saying "I'm just testing out my cell phone." We wish we were making this up.

[Via MGN]

[010111 @ Dec 19th 2005 1:03AM]

wow. that is seriously idiotic.

how about ... calling the land line in the house? or a friend? or are they just doing it because 911 is free?

that is seriously dumb.

[Eric @ Dec 19th 2005 1:03AM]

idiotic, yes, but it turns out that 911 is the only number that will work before you've activated the service with the phone. It'll work with any phone as long as it can get a signal.

"No way, really?"

"Yeah -- go ahead, give it a try if you don't believe me!"

[Tom @ Dec 19th 2005 1:03AM]

A friend of mine got a Nokia phone from Cingular, and needed help setting it up. Her screen showed "Menu" and "SOS" - she hit the SOS option thinking it would connect her with customer service, but no, the phone started dialing 911. Kinda' dumb - why the heck wouldn't they just put "911" instead of "SOS". I think it's dumb, and this may explain why 911 gets called so much from new phones.

[Ben @ Dec 19th 2005 1:03AM]

I remember a local radio station complaining about people dialing them just so they would have the number handy for redial before contests...maybe people think the only way to get a number in their phone's memory is to dial it (and people who have trouble remembering "emergency = 9-1-1" are probably the same people who can't read manuals).

[Jim McClarty @ Dec 19th 2005 1:03AM]

In reply to the person who was complaining about the cingular phone labeling 911 as sos, it could be that the phone has several emergency numbers built in to it. Not all contries use 911 for emergency response. When I lived in China emergencies were 119.

[Andrew @ Dec 19th 2005 1:03AM]

Apart from the fact that 911 is the only number that works out of the box, I think a lot of people simply want to make sure they can call 911 from their phone.

That being said, Americans definitely need more education about 911 and how important it is to keep the lines open.

[Ari @ Dec 19th 2005 1:03AM]

Maybe it's just the fact that you can use 911 from an inactive cel phone that is the problem - people monkey around with it and figured it's not yet activated, so there is no harm in calling 911, but then it goes through. This makes sense to me. And boy are they stupid...

[p51d007 @ Dec 19th 2005 1:03AM]

Yes this happens all the time. I've been a 911 operator for over 12 years. Every year right before Christmas, we always brace for the onslought of 911 hangup calls. Before, it was a lot easier, when people would get a new home phone and want to check out the little red fire button, or the little police shield to see what it would do, we'd answer "911, do you have an emergency" and you'd hear a "click"...the ANI/ALI screen would have the number displayed, so we would just have to hit the redial button on the console to redial the hangup call. With cellphones it is (was) harder. A lot of the calls now we can get the ANI/ALI info from the cell tower and call them back, but it is still a pain in the rear to answer so many hangup calls. It would just be a lot easier in the long run if the person would just stay on the line long enough to tell us they were sorry, they were just checking their phone, than having us have to go through the motions of creating a new call in the CAD system to account for the hangup call.
On a side note, the other not quite as busy time of the year is new years eve....around midnight we always get a bunch of calls from people "imitating their favorite lampshade" wishing us a happy new year.......

[p51d007 @ Dec 19th 2005 1:03AM]

Yes this happens all the time. I've been a 911 operator for over 12 years. Every year right before Christmas, we always brace for the onslought of 911 hangup calls. Before, it was a lot easier, when people would get a new home phone and want to check out the little red fire button, or the little police shield to see what it would do, we'd answer "911, do you have an emergency" and you'd hear a "click"...the ANI/ALI screen would have the number displayed, so we would just have to hit the redial button on the console to redial the hangup call. With cellphones it is (was) harder. A lot of the calls now we can get the ANI/ALI info from the cell tower and call them back, but it is still a pain in the rear to answer so many hangup calls. It would just be a lot easier in the long run if the person would just stay on the line long enough to tell us they were sorry, they were just checking their phone, than having us have to go through the motions of creating a new call in the CAD system to account for the hangup call.
On a side note, the other not quite as busy time of the year is new years eve....around midnight we always get a bunch of calls from people "imitating their favorite lampshade" wishing us a happy new year.......