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Clark County text-to-911 program a success so far

In this April 18, 2012, file photo, David Tucker, executive director of Vermont’s Enhanced 911 Board, holds a smart phone in Montpelier, Vt. Tucker said Vermont was the first in the country where customers of the four major wireless carriers can send text messages to 911. Counties in Washington state have since expanded texting services. (Toby Talbot / Associated Press)
By Emily Gillespie Columbian (Vancouver, Wash.)
In this April 18, 2012, file photo, David Tucker, executive director of Vermont’s Enhanced 911 Board, holds a smart phone in Montpelier, Vt. Tucker said Vermont was the first in the country where customers of the four major wireless carriers can send text messages to 911. Counties in Washington state have since expanded texting services. (Toby Talbot / Associated Press)

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 in scanning the conversations from the past week, there were two incidents of people who were in emergency situations who did not feel safe to make a phone call: An intruder and a suspicious person were 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 texters to instead call 911.

Because of the delay in typing a message and a dispatcher reading and replying, CRESA encourages people to use the program, but with the reminder of “call if you can, text if you can’t.”

Text-to-911 also launched Aug. 23 in six counties in Oregon: Multnomah, Washington, Clackamas, Clatsop, Columbia and Marion.