CELLULAR PHONES THWART 911 DISPATCHERS.Byline: Vicki Haddock San Francisco Examiner The San Francisco Examiner is a U.S. daily newspaper. It has been published continuously in San Francisco, California, since the late 19th Century. History 19th century The beginning of the Examiner is a topic of some controversy. ``I'm in big trouble,'' a small voice told the 911 dispatcher Software that determines what pending tasks should be done next and assigns the available resources to accomplish it. It may execute other programs or generate a list for human operators to follow. See scheduler. . ``My mommy's been gone too long. . . . I'm afraid she's dead. ``I'm all alone out here.'' The 7-year-old said she had been left asleep in a locked parked car while her mother went partying. She woke up at 4 a.m., panicked and used her mom's cellular phone to call for help. There was just one crucial problem: The child had no idea where she was. When dispatchers field most 911 calls from a regular phone, their computer screens automatically flash the phone number and address of the call. But with a 911 call from a portable phone, they have no idea where it's coming from. Instead, they are forced to tie up already clogged lines and burn precious seconds extracting that information from distressed callers. ``Location information, the most difficult nut to crack, is still the most important ingredient to resolving the CHP's primary overload problem,'' said a systemwide report prepared for the CHP CHP Chapter CHP Combined Heat and Power CHP California Highway Patrol CHP Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi (Turkish: Republican People's Party) CHP Chemical Hygiene Plan (OSHA) CHP Community Health Plan by Hesse, Stobbe and Associates. In the July 28 case of the lost child, dispatcher Cynthia James calmly posed question after question, trying to elicit clues about the girl's whereabouts. At one point she asked her to get out of the car and try to read a street sign, but the girl balked balk v. balked, balk·ing, balks v.intr. 1. To stop short and refuse to go on: The horse balked at the jump. 2. , whimpering, ``I'm afraid a bad man will come and get me.'' In a brainstorm, James suggested she shine a flashlight out the car window and try to read the license plate off a trailer parked nearby. It worked. Within minutes the CHP traced the registration to an address in Union City. Police there rescued her, but some 45 minutes had elapsed e·lapse intr.v. e·lapsed, e·laps·ing, e·laps·es To slip by; pass: Weeks elapsed before we could start renovating. n. since James first picked up the call. It's not an isolated incident. On March 5, the Bay Area's CHP center fielded a cellular 911 call from a woman screaming she was being beaten. Her attacker pulled her away from the phone and continued pummeling her. The dispatcher held on for an hour - powerless to help - until the line went dead. Similar incidents have begun to occur coast-to-coast since the proliferation of cell phones. Houston Oilers football player Jeff Alm Jeffrey Lawrence Alm (March 31, 1968 - December 14, 1993) was a former American football player who played defensive tackle for the Houston Oilers of the National Football League. crashed into a guardrail on a Texas highway in 1993. Dazed daze tr.v. dazed, daz·ing, daz·es 1. To stun, as with a heavy blow or shock; stupefy. 2. To dazzle, as with strong light. n. A stunned or bewildered condition. and under the influence of alcohol, he called 911 from his car but was unable to tell the dispatcher his location. He watched in anguish as his passenger and best friend died of injuries. Then he shot himself to death. Prodded by such cases, the Federal Communications Commission Federal Communications Commission (FCC), independent executive agency of the U.S. government established in 1934 to regulate interstate and foreign communications in the public interest. will require within 18 months that wireless carriers relay the caller's phone number and location of the cell site receiving the call signal. It will take an additional five years before the cellular industry faces an FCC (1) (Federal Communications Commission, Washington, DC, www.fcc.gov) The U.S. government agency that regulates interstate and international communications including wire, cable, radio, TV and satellite. The FCC was created under the U.S. mandate for homing devices that can trace calls to within about a 10th of a mile of their origin. Until then, the CHP can only urge people reporting emergencies from cell phones to be as precise as possible about their whereabouts. |
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