Recent phone outage impacting 911 phone lines, serves as a reminder of the text to 911 option
Andie Lopez Bornet
SANTA BARBARA, Calif.- A severed cable made it impossible to call 911 in Santa Barbara County and parts of San Luis obispo counties earlier this week.
Officials encouraged texting 911 as a workaround, and they want folks to know this is an option even when phone lines are working.
On Tuesday, emergency phone lines and air traffic control towers on the central coast were knocked offline when a fiber line was cut on De La Vina street in Santa Barbara
While lines were out of service, the option to text 911 was still available. an option some may not be aware of.
Officials say the service is essential for those in danger, or have other circumstances that make speaking difficult.
“A lot of community members that benefit from text to 911-if you’re hearing impaired or if you have a speech impairment that makes it difficult for you to communicate,” said Raquel Zick, Santa Barbara County spokeswoman. “If you’re in a situation where you can’t talk either because you don’t want to be heard because maybe you’re hiding, you can still communicate without being over heard.”
Your Newschannel went to the Santa Barbara county Sheriff’s Dispatch Center to see what the 911 text service looks like
“All of these outages affect services in different ways so this is just another opportunity for us to outline that when services are impacted in one way our communications dispatch center has many different ways that we can pivot to make sure we are available to answer calls for service,” said Zick.
“Call if you can, text if you can’t. So if you are unable to speak or talk text us, otherwise if you can call us, call us,” said Dispatch Supervisor, Ben Johnson.
Ben Johnson has been a dispatcher for 20 years.
He says including a precise location helps them work faster when receiving text messages, because text to 911 doesn’t automatically give a location the way a phone call does.
When texting 911, it’s best to stick to actual text and avoid other media like pictures and emojis.
After the recent outage it is a good reminder of the ongoing availability text to 911 option, made available in many different languages including Spanish.