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Comment by vegardx | Hacker News Reader

And this is why I've made it a habit to save the the local number to the police station where I live, and after moving around a little I seem to have accumulated a few. Always nice to have a backup should you need it.

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Not just the police department... Fire, ambulance, poison control, dig safely, local traffic control tower (they're about ~9 miles away from me), pharmacy, and suicide prevention (every fridge needs one of those magnets).

Smart. Noting these. Why traffic control tower?

Maybe to call if there's a plane in trouble?

Some airports also have public phone numbers to get weather information, could come in handy to know if you're-for example, living in tornado alley and a system rolls through that knocks out power and cellular service.

If you have a working landline phone, calling a nearby airport could be your only way to know the latest conditions and if it's safe to go outside.

My elderly father is living with my sister's family. To find out if it's safe to venture outside they tie a rope to him and push him out the door.

Seems like the government could very cheaply offer an app that is basically just a geolocated lookup for these sorts of things. The app could basically just be a spatialite database generated from a git repo, and it would only have to be updated periodically, and would never go down.

They should but I think it would be a great community project. I'd be interested in helping out, been working on apps for ~3 years.

I've always wondered why there isn't a local version of 911. Like 811 connects you to the local police department. Because no one knows the local number. Besides, what if you are traveling? That would also free up the load on 911 operators.

What do you mean? 911 does go to your local dispatcher.

I mean to the local police for non-emergency events. 911 is supposed to be an emergency line. But people call it because they just know that number.

In the UK, ringing 101 gets you through to your local police dept's non-emergency number, and 111 gets you to NHS 24, the national non-emergency medical advice service. Both of those are fairly recent, though - NHS 24 was launched in 2001, and 101 in 2009.

That's kinda what I'm asking for. America really only has 911.

I think the UK definitely benefits from being much much smaller, and the emergency services much more tightly integrated, so rolling out new numbers is not as huge an endeavour as it would be in the States.

311 is increasingly used for local services, but coverage is spotty and usage is inconsistent. In Indianapolis, last I heard, it was only for police use, while in some other cities it’s a general government point of contact.

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