Normally I would mention something like this via the is301 Twitter account, but this is so important I’m going to announce it here instead (although since this site and the Twitter account are linked, I guess I announced it via both anyway!).

Henderson residents can now text a message to 911 instead of calling. Henderson is the only department in the state to offer this functionality, and it is carrier-neutral. This would be very useful in circumstances of, G-d forbid, a home invasion where you are trying to stay hidden, or if you wanted to avoid the appearance of making a call for whatever reason, or for people who are deaf or hard of hearing and are therefore unable to make emergency calls.

At the dispatch center, text message replies can be custom written or some standard, common responses can be selected from a dropdown list for faster response time. As you can probably guess, that is of utmost importance in emergencies.

The FCC has a webpage that talks about texting to 911, and it states that by June of 2015 all wireless carriers would be required to provide text-to-911 service capability. It also apparently requires the dispatch centers, known as Public Safety Answering Points, “have elected to accept emergency text messages from the public.” That wording is curious; I wonder why a dispatch center would not elect to do that, other than cost – the price tag for Henderson was around $1 million.

You can download an Excel list of regions where text-to-911 service is available if you’re interested.

I’m very impressed that we have this functionality here. Hopefully this is just the beginning and we’ll see it become more widespread in the state and even the country. If the video announcing it is made available from Channel 13 news, I’ll embed it below.