Yep, 112 is the listed EU standard here.
But nobody knows that.
We dial 100 which has been our emergency number since for ever.

London North Yellow Pages 2003/4:
on page 2 at the bottom
"If you need to contact the police, fire brigade, ambulance service or coastguard in an emergency DIAL 999 OR 112"
no mention of 911. but yes, it is in the phonebook in the Emergency Numbers section right at the front. considering how much international exposure london has, i'm not really surprised. it also mentions 999 in the "Help in a Hurry" box on the same page before listing all the local police stations.

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Originally posted by dotherobot:
Just a note for those who haven't had the pleasure of calling 911 in the states, we just have the one number. When you call it they say, "911 what is your emergency?" or something like it. You then say, "I'm on fire!" or "I just shot somebody!" or "That guy is the wrong color to be in this neighborhood!"

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There is one number in Japan, as far as I know, and it's 119. When you call they ask you in a there-is-an-emergency-and-we-are-all-very-concerned style, "Is it a fire? Do you need an ambulance?"

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Originally posted by dotherobot:
Just a note for those who haven't had the pleasure of calling 911 in the states...Now the last time I did it, (to report kids trying to break into cars) I got a fire dispatcher, so halfway through my explanation she transferred me to a police dispatcher and I had to start all over. I think I was told they do it this way because most emergencies are going to be related to medical or fire events so they are the first people you speak to. Calling from a cell phone makes it even more complicated, if you are in a different city than your cell phone service and your phone isn't smart enough to know where it is you may get the wrong city's emergency service.

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Ah yes, welcome to Florida! The standard that the country is going toward is for a central dispatching agency to get all 911 calls. Provided you're not living in a part of the country that's excessively allergic to taxes and collective, public problem-solving (ahem! thesouth!), that central agency is tied into every emergency response agency in your state and has direct radio, phone and computer contact with whatever agency you need. So in the parts of the country where this has already been done, such as Washington State, there is no such thing as a fire or police dispatcher answering 911 calls. They're all-purpose dispatchers and they handle all the details for the responding agencies. It's a fairly smooth system, provided that the central dispatching agency in your area is competent. In Washington, they're surprisingly competent.

Unfortunately (?), since the advent of this system, police departments have used this as an excuse to shut down their non-emergency phone lines outside of normal business hours. Which means no calling them up at 11pm to discuss the noise problem next door with the patrol sergeant, unless you have personal connex.

And as for the cell phone system, it should also tie into the central dispatchers unless, once again, you live somewhere where they believe that competent emergency response is not the job of government. I've had no problems with calling 911 while driving down I5, even tailing a drunk driver, giving info to the dispatcher until the State Trooper arrived and pulled the bastard over. This kind of thing used to be nearly impossible to do successfully before the advent of the new dispatching system.

One thing of special interest/note:

ALL cell phones in the United States, whether they are in service or not, are allowed to call emergency services at any time. So if you haven't paid your cell phone bill and you've got an emergency, your call to 911 WILL go through okay.

In the state of Tennessee they've allowed non-emergency phone calls to be made on cell phones, too. Here in Nashville the standard non-emergency number is 862-8600. On the few occasions when I couldn't afford to keep my cell phone active, I was still able to use both the 911 and 862-8600 numbers without question, night or day.

So far, the only time I've ever used the 911 or non-emergency numbers was to call the Police and report any number of crimes. I haven't tried to use it to contact the fire department or hospital, though. At any rate- each time I used it, there was no transfer of dispatch services for me and they responded very, very quickly. As far as I know 911 has a central dispatch that covers all emergency services. I've also noticed that when I call 911 while on the Interstate, they ask me which city I'm in but when I'm in Nashville they ask me which intersection I'm at, which leads me to assume that they're using GPS to track a cell phone's location when it makes a 911 call and such calls are automatically routed to specific dispatch centers.

My father-in-law is on the board of the local ambulance service in Colorado. For various complicated reasons, people there don't feel obligated or are unable to pay their ambulance bills. It's an unusual situation, in that the ambulance service in a nonprofit, non-governmental entity. Not attached to, say, the fire dept as is the case in other places.

Anyway. They're having a money problem, these ambulance folks. So they decide to form an ambulance district, in order to expand their area of coverage, pool resources and tap into the tax base. They would still bill for services rendered, but would also be taking a very minor tax from the populace.

Because of local laws, the various props had to be separated out. Prop one was "Shall we form this district?" and Prop two was "Shall we fund this district?" Let's be clear. The tax burden was $3 for every $100k of property value. But this is colorado, so of course they voted to form the district, but not to fund it.

Thank you, yes, thank you, welcome to the red states. I want my benefits, I don't want to pay for them. My father-in-law is a republican, so he and I got to have a little talk about this. Didn't change his mind on anything, but it was still a conversation you've gotta have. My dad and I had the same conversation, cuz my mom's meds recently came to $32k a year. Pop can't retire because he would lose his insurance, and medicare will cover some but not most of the expense. So I got to have the "This is why you should vote blue, pop." conversation, but he seems to feel that gay marriage is definately more important. He's a great guy, but utterly blind once in a while.

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Originally posted by NightShadow:
I've also noticed that when I call 911 while on the Interstate, they ask me which city I'm in but when I'm in Nashville they ask me which intersection I'm at, which leads me to assume that they're using GPS to track a cell phone's location when it makes a 911 call and such calls are automatically routed to specific dispatch centers.

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Not GPS. They have a system that tells them what tower is relaying your call. Depending on your area, that can narrow it down to a couple square miles, or to several dozen square miles. That's why they have a general idea where you are, but not an exact fix on you.

I am personally really into calling the non-emergency police line. I have it programmed into my cell phone. I like to call them up, you know, just to be helpful. You know, just doing my civic duty.

"Berkeley Police, how can I help you?"

"Hello yes, I'd like to report a crime."

"Alright, and what is the crime?"

"Well, I'm here on Telegraph Avenue, and people are selling drugs. I just thought you might want to know."

"Ah huh."

"Telegraph and Prince."

"Right. Well ma'am we already have 3 officers in the area, so I'll have one of them circle that block and check it out."

"Thank you."

"Ah huh."

Ok, so maybe I've never done that per se, but I've always wanted to.

"Hello sir? I'm on San Pablo here, and I thought you might like to know there are some hookers here."

In truth I've only ever used it to report hazardous waste. Whenever you find needles in the streets you're not supposed to touch them, you're supposed to call for a hazardous waste disposal unit. Anyway, I've found large caches of needles before.

Last year, I wound up calling 911 from my cell phone three times in as many weeks (nothing having to do with me: one assault witnessed, one downed power wire reported, and one possible cardiac arrest at our office called in).

Let me tell you: 911 and cell phones DON'T mix in NYC.

While at the cafe (the world-infamous Cafe Coco in Nashville... which you probably haven't heard of and likely never will unless I mention it in the future), I have been known to report panhandlers the moment they start to bother the patrons. I have also been known to heckle said panhandlers, but that's another topic entirely. I've also reported car thefts, accidents, drug deals, drive-by shootings, hit-and-runs (and I actually chased the perp until the cops caught up and took over- FUN!)... and there was this one situation where I came upon a flipped-over car in the middle of the road,, a telephone pole that had been toppled over and was laying across the vehicle, lots of blood all over the place but not a body to be found anywhere in sight (and believe me, I LOOKED around). Nor was there a police car anywhere to be seen. It was late, late at night and in an area of town that wasn't really one of the safest, so I called the non-emergency number to inform them of what I'd discovered.

Why did I call the non-emergency number? Well, despite the fact that I saw a pretty massive pool of blood next to the over-turned vehicle, I didn't find a body, so I assumed that the injured party must have either wandered off or hitched a ride to the hospital (which was only a few blocks away). No other vehicles were involved in the scene, so no one else was in danger. It was late at night, so traffic was non-existant. All of this = no clear and present danger, no emergency. The emergency, whatever it was, had passed and what I saw before was simply the aftermath.

But, apparently, no one had yet told the cops about it.

So I stuck around and waited for a few patrol units to arrive some five minutes later. When they got there, we all walked around the mess and scratched our heads in an effort to figure out exactly what had gone wrong.

What we determined was that the driver of the vehicle had either been drunk or sleeping at the wheel, smashed into the telephone pole, flipped over and the pole fell on top of the vehicle. The driver then either fled the scene, wandered off in a daze or was rushed to the nearby hospital by a passerby who had not yet taken the opportunity to report the incident.

What really happened, though, was that the driver had been forced off the road by a local gang and had been kidnapped. He was found a few miles away in a dumpster, severely injured and stabbed twice but still barely alive, about fifteen minutes after the cops had arrived at the scene of the "accident."

I tell you: we live in a very fucked up world.

Curiously enough, I think the mobile-phone specific emergerncy number here is 112.

The idea is that if you're out of mobile covergae (ie, most of this wide brown land), if you punch in 112, your call gets put through to a hyper-sensitive LEO satellite that sends on your call.

Every good Stonecutter know the real number is 912.

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Originally posted by NightShadow:
One thing of special interest/note:

ALL cell phones in the United States, whether they are in service or not, are allowed to call emergency services at any time. So if you haven't paid your cell phone bill and you've got an emergency, your call to 911 WILL go through okay.

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In another ringing endorsment of the Florida educational system a couple of 13 year ols girls apparntly knew this also (I didn't). So one night while apparently bored to death they started crank calling 911 on their moms disconnected cell phone. Now they found out something really odd, the cell phone can call 911 but 911 sees no number or location on a disconnected cell phone (this may have to do wit the type of phone so it may be different with newer phones). After 10 calls that sent deputies scambling all over the county one of the dispatchers told the girls he need to call them back and would they tell him their home number? Now here is where the education system does us proud, they gave him their real number. They were shocked, shocked I say when deputies showed up on their doorstep.

While I will resist the creeping Americanisation of Australia to the death, and possibly beyond (zombie wombats can run at 40 kph and... you know the rest), you've gotta wonder whether, with all the Yank touristas as well as, as noted above, a whole generation raised on Yank TV, just setting up a little call forwarding mechanism so that 911 puts you through to 000 might make a lot of sense...

Maybe they're using 911 for something actually important, like up-to-the-minute wombat tracking.

colin: Possibly, but are there REALLY that many wombat-related ass-whupings in Oz? Or are they just doing one of those "wombat sightings" deals, like a phone number set aside for the discovery and sighting of a wild, unchecked wombat on the prowl? Wait... DO wombats prowl or do they simply scamper?