When 911 calls fail | Hacker News Reader

When 911 calls fail

theverge.com

124 pointsgr2020101 comments

Please HN, there are a few comments in this thread talking about "taking action" if you happen to be a bystander during an emergency.

Let me implore you. If the area isn't safe, do not even attempt to enter the scene. Fires can instantly flare up and engulf a room in seconds. Rivers can be so cold they cause shock upon entering the water and, in some cases, they cause cardiac arrest. Tiny pieces of broken glass can cause deep, sometimes life-threatening lacerations. An accident on the side of the road can immediately escalate into a multi-vehicle incident if another driver doesn't pay attention.

What we don't want to happen is for you, the hero, to become another patient. Not only are you putting your life in danger, you're also increasing the risk for your rescuers as well.

What you can do is this:

1. Secure the scene. If the accident occurred at the side of the road, park behind the accident and turn your hazards on. Wave at traffic to slow down and be cautious around the accident. If there is a house fire, try to find the gas shut-off valve and turn it off.

2. Assist the location of the scene. It's often difficult for EMS to locate the scene of the emergency. Standing near the front of the building or the entrance to the parking lot and flagging the ambulance/PD/fire down helps a ton. Leading them directly to the scene is just as important.

3. Use your common sense. Don't let the panic take hold of you. Be rational, reasonable. I'm not saying you should never try to help someone, just make sure that YOU are safe FIRST before heading in to assist.

I hold EMT/Paramedic certs and volunteer in my spare time.

Thanks.

Edit: I also want to point out that there is generally very little anyone can do aside from basic management of the ABC's (airway, breathing and circulation) without equipment. Some of that equipment is located onboard a fire truck or an ambulance. Most of that equipment is usually found inside the operating room of your local hospital. The faster the patient is moved safely to the local ED, the better it is.

>Rivers can be so cold they cause shock upon entering the water and, in some cases, they cause cardiac arrest.

While that's true, I don't think it's that dangerous. Winter swimming, for example, is not considered especially dangerous for healthy persons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_swimming

Those people do not just suddenly jump into cold river after years of swimming in hot water exclusively. At least in here, people who engage in that activity start in summer and basically continue until winter. Beginners also tend not to do January swimming first year. They skip the coldest months first year taking cold showers at home instead. The theory is that the body needs time to get used to it.

Also, they do not just jump into water out of nothing, they take little exercise before, try to keep their hair not wet in water etc.

Edit: wiki you linked states the same in the health risks chapter: "Winter swimming can be dangerous to people who are not used to swimming in very cold water."

Ice swimming is easier in the coldest months when the water is a lot warmer than the air. Only the most hardcore swimmers do it in April when the air is warmer than the water. Also I have never heard of someone taking cold showers at home to prepare for ice swimming. I would say most just start when there's enough ice to cut a hole in it, without practicing it for months. Source: Finnish.

People here who are into cold water do it every day. It is supposed to be healthy. Cold water swimming on itself is not usually goal for people in here, it is more of a next steps when cold showers do not feel satisfying for them anymore. Most of them keep cold showering every day, but stop going into lake for some months. I do not know when exactly they resume activity, I never cared enough about it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_shock_response

>I also want to point out that there is generally very little anyone can do aside from basic management of the ABC's (airway, breathing and circulation) without equipment

When I took CPR causes we were told to start doing cpr before calling an ambulance, unless we thought it was a heart attack (since the person would be death by the time the ambulance arrived otherwise). Was this wrong?

You're usually taught to yell for help as you start CPR. There's not really a way to tell if a person has a had a heart attack without an EKG or labs. You can assess for cardiac arrest (that's the whole reason for CPR), and any time the heart is stopped, the best chance for the patient is immediate, high quality CPR.

The only exception to this rule is if you are in an area where no one will find you unless you call for help yourself. For example, if you are home alone with someone and you start CPR, you will probably need to stop out of exhaustion before someone will hear you cries for help. In this case, you need to call 911 first. If you're in a mall or something, then leave the emergency call to someone else and get started on chest compression.

According to the American Heart Association (and every other source I've read), this is the proper way for anybody to perform CPR:

1. Check for signs of life. Vigorously tap (hit) your patient a few times. Generally, we like tapping their upper chest, right below the shoulders when we do this. Yell, "Are you OK?" a few times. If the patient does not react at all, it's time for you to become a hero.

2. Call for help. In training, this is normally emphasized by having the student point at someone and yelling "Call 911!". If you know that there is a defibrillator in the vicinity, this is also the perfect time to yell, "Grab the defibrillator!".

3. Begin chest compressions. Take one hand, splay your fingers out (so it looks like you're making a "five" symbol). Take your other hand, fit each finger between the other finger; your thumbs should be at the very end and your fingers should interleave. You want to begin compressions about the middle (or slightly higher) of the patient's sternum - that's the central bone where your ribs connect to. Try to get about 100 compressions per minute. It's the tempo of a fast, upbeat song.

4. IF YOU ARE TRAINED: You may begin to perform head-tilt chin-lift, 2 rescue breaths every 30 compressions.

5. Continue compressions until better trained rescuers arrive.

I started the first VoIP 9-1-1 service for providers. 9-1-1 and similar emergency response services are a great boon. Something most people just take for granted and figure it just works like magic. The job those people have is mostly thankless and comes with killer stress. (Listening to a few recordings, I'd have a breakdown within a day on that job.)

On a more HN-note, I saw an interesting glimpse into how some of the responders view privacy. In context of what to do for VoIP phones, the general feeling at one NENA meeting was "ISPs should provide detailed location information on any access lines to VoIP devices". The implication there is that any software on your computer or network would be able to do a real "geo IP" lookup because your ISP would have to provide your address of record to anything using the connection. No one seemed to realise the massive problem this would create.

The other interesting thing is that PSAPs are heading towards an interconnected model. The idea being (at least a few years ago) that PSAPs could all be on the Internet, and transfer calls to each other with SIP + some nutty extensions, bridge in translators, a real utopia. Which sounds nice until you realise so many PSAPs are woefully underfunded and in no position to be running critical infrastructure on the Internet. Hopefully states would step up and provide adequate funding and it could be pulled off as a government project. But it's not so clear, and there's a long way to go. One PSAP told us he didn't want us sending calls from "Internet phones" because his PSAP equipment might get a virus (over his voice line.)

SWAT'ing would be way too easy if there was a really easy VoIP solution to call 911.

SWAT'ing is trivially performed. Sign up for VoIP service, dial 911. Many systems also have normal phone numbers that go into a 911 center, or to a failover call processing place.

Police departments will also let you submit crime reports online. I "swatted" myself by accident after filing a report because one of my license plates was missing. I didn't get any follow up, so I figured I'd just go deal with it later. A bit after that, a cop pulls me over, draws his weapon, aims -- because my car pops up as stolen on his scanner. If someone was to file such a report on someone with concealed carry, I'll be the outcome could be pretty bad.

I feel like i'm missing part of the story. You reported a stolen license plate and it got translated to a stolen car?

He found it and put it on the car, it sounds like.

I had two plates, and I guess one fell off or got stolen or something. So I still had my back plate on. Since the PD never confirmed anything after the online report, I figured I would have to go down and do it in person some time. But apparently not.

Since there was zero confirmation, this means you can just do the same to anyone. If the person is particularly jumpy, disabled, has mental issues, etc. it could easily get serious.

The owner of a supposed stolen vehicle having a concealed carry license shouldn't change the cop's attitude and behavior, and we're of course taught not to do stupid things in situations like this. Cops deal with legal concealed carriers all the time (> 8 million licences nation wide, some states don't require one), with a paucity of horror stories.

> No one seemed to realise the massive problem this would create.

Is that really surprising? I suspect there are countless things about the ins and outs of emergency services that wouldn't occur to you.

This is why some states have chosen to go with a single PSAP for the whole state - Cellular E911 has a couple problems, one - the geolocation features of cell phones is best effort, and if it fails, the best the company can do is guess from which site/sector the call is coming in on to route them to the correct PSAP. Two - the cellular networks on whole are best effort, cellular as a technology cannot be as reliable as a wireline hookup, period.

In the future, I believe the move to VoLTE will make E911 more reliable, as it will enable more location data to be sent from the handset at the time of call, but until then, the most reliable way to get geolocation data to a PSAP is to use a landline, period, the landline telephone, is and will remain more reliable, consistent and predictable than any of the technologies replacing it.

As far as why the carrier couldnt be reached? likely calling the wrong place - Sprint FWIW is and has been in the midst of a forklift network upgrade for a couple years now, its just wrapping up now, but parts of the network have been partially non-functional for hours or days at a time - I know however that regular e911 drive testing is a part of test and turnup, and the planned maintenance process for Sprint.

FWIW, the landline tends to work because of the amount of manual processes that go into setting up the line in the first place.

Well, depends on what you mean by manual - most landline phones now can be hooked up without even a frame man having to run jumpers, or for that matter a field service visit, customer enters the provisioning information (service address, billing information, puts a credit card in) and the service is turned up.

The UK has (essentially) one PSAP for the whole country (it's not actually — there's a number spread across the country for reasons of redundancy, but call allocations are done across the whole network).

It has a few interesting results — most notably, when giving a location, they likely know nothing about it. If you say you're in "Central Park, Fakesville", and it's a small park where you can see the whole thing from the entrance, they will still ask you where about in the park you are — because they don't know. People in high-stress situations can end up wasting time trying to describe in gratuitous detail where they are, instead of just giving an answer like, "it's small; they'll see".

I'm surprised that the situation wasn't handled better by the phones, though. At least here, if a mobile can contact any tower (regardless of network), an emergency call can be placed through it without charge. I suppose if the emergency line is already stagnated, trying again on a different network would just make it worse. Hmm…

A month or two ago I had to call 999 to report a fire on my road. I gave the names of my road and neighbourhood and the operator asked which town or city I was in.

This threw me a little as I live in what is, arguably, the UK's second city (Manchester) and assumed that the system would have at least identified that much from the cell tower.

Still, the fire brigade responded within 5-10 minutes of me placing the call and had the blaze under control little more than 10 minutes after that so I guess the system works.

They almost certainly had it on the screen in front of them. They typically ask for full details anyway, primarily to confirm. City often gets asked separately to make sure the report gets to the right place.

I don't think it really matters if people describe the place in too much detail; the ambulance/whatever is already heading for the central park and the extra directions are just relayed to them on the way.

If the caller needs to be giving instructions as to care for the injured person, it can delay it. There are genuine reasons why you want the dispatching section of the call over ASAP.

911 for mobile is hard. Just routing to the right PSAP is tough. In the early days of cellular, California originally routed all cellular 911 calls to the California Highway Patrol, on the grounds that someone was probably calling from a car. The CHP ended up running a sizable call center to redirect emergency calls.

Only recently did most phones have GPS capability. Picking the PSAP based on cell tower gets you to roughly the right place, but PSAPs have to have really good handoff capability to nearby jurisdictions, and some of them don't.

All this is a separate issue from calling 911 and not getting any answer. That's a serious carrier failure and should be treated as such.

Interesting - carriers need to ..track callers to within 50 meters horizontally and 3 meters vertically

This poses a problem in dense urban areas with high-rise buildings. The private sector companies mentioned in the article who "zipping ahead" of carriers can provide an altitude using things like wifi tracking, but that still needs to be cross-referenced to an actual floor number. (Keep in mind some buildings don't have a 13th floor, etc.) Barometers in phones don't work well indoors either...

So, this may be a case where an FCC regulation is next to impossible to meet, unless someone can figure out how to map altitudes to actual building floor numbers at scale. Seems like that would be pretty labor intensive effort...

Where does the FCC regulation say you need to map it to a specific floor? The carrier just has to say where the person is, not how to get to them. They don't have to provide navigation directions to the EMS crew do they? Seems to me like just giving an elevation and coordinates would be compliant.

They need to be accurate within 3 meters vertically, and telling a first responder that a call came in from an area say 1000ft above sea level would not be that helpful to him/her when standing in front of a 45 storey building, wondering which floor they should go to.

So, it would seem knowing the floor number would be super helpful (though maybe not a regulatory requirement as you say.)

Presumably, the first responder could could have an altimeter (or gps) and know their own height.

Better, but still not going to be overly helpful. Call came from 1000ft, first responder is standing at 750ft - there are 250ft of floors in between.

So now we just need to carry blueprints for every building that tells us how tall the floors are...

A range of 3-4 stories is better than a range of 45...

I understand that it's a good idea keep the local (10-digit) numbers in your phone for the police and fire departments where you live and work. See, for example the San Francisco PD web site http://www.sf-police.org/index.aspx?page=38 which notes, "When calling 911 on a cellular phone near a highway, the call is connected to The California Highway Patrol (CHP) dispatch center."

Leneweaver attempted to track down Sprint employees about the outage, but couldn't reach anyone at the company.
[...]

Two weeks later, Leneweaver got in touch with the company.

Erm, how is this okay?

You really shouldn't be allowed to sell a phone - or collect revenue from a phone - that isn't able to call 911.

I have had this experience in Maryland in 2009. Luckily it wasn't a very serious emergency in then end. There was a small explosion in our heater and I smelled smoke, so I wanted the fire department to check it out. I called 911 repeatedly on my cell and repeatedly got a busy signal, finally I went back in the house, got out my computer (before smart phones) and looked up the local fire department number. After they arrived they asked me if I called 911, and I said I couldn't get through and they said I needed to keep trying so they had it for their records?!? The fact that they asked sort of implies that this happens often (or maybe they just knew that I had called directly). It was a weird experience, and turned out that I was lucky that the heater hadn't completely exploded. I definitely don't think I will ever trust 911 again.

The title should be clearer: E911 is not 911. This is why we still have an overpriced landline at my home.

I am on Sprint, would like to test my 9-1-1 coverage, but unsure how without making a false 9-1-1 call.

In setting up (and verifying) several VoIP E-911 systems and other PSTN phone systems, I've made dozens of "test" calls without issue. When the dispatcher answers, just tell them that you are testing 911 service and that you would like to verify that you got connected to the correct dispatching center.

I've never had one of the dispatchers become upset at this - they want your 911 calls to succeed just as much as you do.

Yep. VoIP contractors (I was one) are usually required to call 911 from every location in a PBX system to make sure that the E911 data shows up correctly.

There is usually a script for this, and the first words out of your mouth should be "This is a non-emergency call. I am testing <insert short description>. Is this a good time?"

It tells the call-taker that they don't need to worry about you, and that you are being careful not to tie up resources. If they need to hang up and focus on priority calls, they will. Most likely, they'll be happy to help.

You only need to do that if you're stupid frankly, all you need to do is insert dialing rules that if 911 call send the BTN/main number, if for all other calls send station DID - often this is done on the carrier side - so you should only need to place calls from one phone for the whole site. It's wholly impractical to do this as well for any site with more than 20 phones, I had customers with sites that has over 1000 stations on them.

Sorry, by "location" I meant site, not station. Yes.

That makes more sense, yes :-D - 911 routing issues were always vexing, usually it was a to the wrong PSAP.

One of the big players had a lovely-insane policy. They'd use your last MSAG-validated[1] address, regardless what new address you had provisioned.

So, user's in Texas, gets an MSAG-validated address, everything's good. They move to Kentucky, change addresses. The new address would have some MSAG issue, and could take days or longer to resolve.

This company thought the best thing to do was to route the call to Texas.

(MSAG is the street addressing system that the PSAPs use. It can be considerably different from the postal address.)

That sounds vaguely like the normal intrado bullshit.

Hey, using Microsoft Streets and Trips is a great way to charge $85/hr to correct addresses.

In 2010 when I was doing it, we'd run it thru google maps if validation failed, similar conceptually.

I can understand doing this as part of your job to test a system but isn't it reckless for people to do it just to test their own phones? You're taking up one of a limited number of phones lines for 10-20 seconds, potentially leaving someone in a life threatening situation unable to get through in the only 10-20 seconds they have the opportunity to make the call in.

If everyone did this at once, it might overwhelm the call center, but in general a E911 call center needs to have far more capacity than there are calls (or otherwise an urgent call might go unanswered).

My understanding is the key rules are:

1) wait for an operator and do not hang up (because if you hang up they assume something bad happened and will send police/fire/etc to you), and,

2) tell them that it is a test call so that they can assess whether they can spend time on you or should hang up to answer a more urgent call.

I'm sure kids call 911 enough as a prank that your test call won't have a meaningful impact on call volume.

In my area there were actually advertisements on the radio asking people to use the lock function on their cellphone to prevent pocket-calls to 911 a few years back. They claimed it had become a problem.

It leads me to wonder if your comment about capacity (which I assumed was the case as well) does not apply evenly everywhere.

Well, if you don't tell them it's a test call and you pocket dial, I would hope that the 911 call center would assume that you're being held hostage and send police/fire/etc. to you.

So, IMO, that the system isn't meant to handle this type of false alarm isn't reflective of call center capacity but rather fire/police/ambulance capacity (and also annoying everyone involved).

The system is built to tolerate 25 people calling in the same accident on the interstate or 100s of people calling in a plane crash. Last specs I heard around '10 was about a half million calls per day country wide. There are about 25 million small businesses in the country (accurate to only about one sig fig). If you assume a business tests a new phone system once per decade and there are about 10K days in a decade (close enough not to matter) then there will be about 2500 test calls per day out of 500000 total calls or basically its a rounding error.

Now on the other hand, don't be a jerk. They're busy at certain times of day and they kinda expect people to make test calls during relatively boring business hours but not during rush hour or at bar close time. Don't be making test calls while a hurricane is hitting the city or while a t-storm is passing thru or a presidential visit or wildfires are kinda nearby, etc.

I've done this helping out as part of PBX installs (admittedly a long time ago) and just be calm and clear and polite when verifying the address routing and remember to say "thanks" and its not a big deal.

> ...there are about 10K days in a decade (close enough not to matter)...

That is quite a bit off, there are ~3650 days in a decade. If you really wanted to use round numbers, would 5K not have been a better choice?

No, because its harder to estimate the arithmetic in my head with 5K than 10K and when I got the result it was so utterly extreme that I felt no need to go back and correct. If it was significant rather than a rounding error then I'd have gone back and rerun the numbers.

Also I forgot to mention I used small biz pbx as the most populous estimate because I assumed j.random.ATT cellphone user wouldn't test, one iphone should do about the same as the next

I've started two E911 companies. Most answering points are "OK" with you testing if you immediately identify that you're testing and wish to confirm address information. They may put you on hold. In very rare cases, they might insist on dispatching.

What about setting up the phones so that dialling 911/999 etc shows the current GPS co-ordinates on the phone screen (on phones that GPS enabled).

That or even a button on the screen that will "read" them to the telephone operator at the other end.

This looks like an opportunity for an app. Your phone has GPS and a better idea of where you are than the cell network. What if you could open a 911 app, tick a few check boxes (Is this a medical emergency? violent situation? Do you require an ambulance, fire truck, and/or police?), and it would post your GPS coordinates and your cell number. The local dispatch office would than automatically call you and hook you up with a dispatcher who gets the details.

What is this theoretical app providing that isn't established within the first 10 seconds of a 911 call?

It could be a much faster, nicer way to answer the question 'where are you?'

This is obviously anecdotal, but I've had to call 911 a couple times (I live in NYC, things happen on the subway). Explaining where I am took up 75% of those calls. They want very precise details and it's sometimes hard to answer to the level of detail they want.

Example: I once had to call 911 when a woman fainted in the middle of the platform. I spent (seriously) several minutes explaining my location to the 911 operator. I was waiting for a train that only has one platform - the train goes east/west, and eastbound stops on the opposite side of the same platform as the westbound. The 911 operator couldn't process this and kept asking me whether I was on the westbound or the eastbound platform.

We wasted a few minutes going back and forth on this - which could've been critical if the woman was in need of urgent medical care.

It would also allow you to make a 911 "call" silently, which in some (admittedly rare) circumstances would be a huge benefit.

10 seconds

No, you spent that time ticking check boxes.

Since SMS 911 is on its way, the app would only need to populate this info into a text message and send.

Better yet, you wouldn't even need to actually talk to them, which means you would be free to provide assistance in an emergency, not risking making a sound in a home invasion and the GPS could stay on, allowing emergency crews to keep track of where you are.

Talking takes time, attention and requires you to use your hands - something that is not desireable in an emergency.

The main image say "911, what's your emergency?", but in my experience they have always intro'd with "911, where is your emergency?". I wonder if there was a protocol change where they figured that the location was the most important piece of information in case the phone call got cut short.

This is just crazy, the FCC keeping quiet is quite unbelievable.

It's more sensationalist than crazy. The only worthwhile point is that the FCC should get around to looking at the location accuracy requirements for indoor usage.

But talking about the article, suppose there is a scheduled maintenance that will affect service, and there's no way around it. What exactly should the telco do? There's not a whole lot they can do. Yeah, it's bad if the service is unavailable, and generally, no one wants that to be the situation. But somehow trynna make it out to some terrible secret is silly.

Getting a fast busy signal when calling 911 when you have service and can reach normal numbers is a serious problem that needs to be resolved no matter what angle you take.

For the other issues, agreed, there's only so much you can reasonably expect.

If a tower is going to lose its ability to service critical calls, it should not be in charge of phones that could be on nearby towers.

Fascinating, never thought about these implications before for network carriers.

This may be slightly off-topic, but it's also important.

911 is not there to help you. You need to know how to help yourself.

My story - Interstate 880 in the East Bay, Fremont, CA. Not a desolate stretch of highway, not in the middle of nowhere (I mean, Fremont sucks but...)

I saw an SUV swerve and then roll in front of me on the highway. Took out 2 other cars as well. Slid on its roof about 50 feet then stopped. Gasoline, debris, and fruit (it was carrying fruit?) strewn about the Freeway.

Tons of people pull over. Insanity.

The car is still running, and gas is pouring out of the SUV. A bystander and myself get the passengers out. They're unconscious. I recognize the danger of moving them, but the fire danger was very real.

Anyway, long story short -- guy goes into shock. Pisses himself, won't respond.

15 people had called 911.

Elapsed time? 20 minutes.

Still not a single local PD, Firetruck, or CHP officer.

The first officer was DRIVING BY on the freeway and didn't know the accident had even happened.

Imagine that was your wife, your son, your partner, your family.

We had a nurse stop and give care. We also had a contractor who had a box of flares stop and close lanes for us. This was all citizens doing work.

Shortly after this incident, I bought a handgun. Because I knew when seconds count, the police/fire/emt are MINUTES away.

(I also took medical course)

"The car is still running, and gas is pouring out of the SUV." ... "I bought a handgun."

A fire extinguisher and a first aid kit in your car might be more useful.

Here's the actual idea in context, not intentionally misconstrued into a strawman.

"15 people had called 911. Elapsed time? 20 minutes." ... "Shortly after this incident, I bought a handgun. Because I knew when seconds count, the police/fire/emt are MINUTES away"

you can bet op also has those in his car now.

the handgun is kept at home, because even when you're in your own house, you can't count on the police being there soon enough. you just can't, because they are human beings in automobiles, incapable of teleportation and omniscience.

It's obvious that the incident caused him to think about other types of emergencies, including violent assault, to which emergency teams would not be able to quickly respond.

But yes, a fire extinguisher and first aid kit would also be a good idea.

It's worthwhile to note that in many places you are legally obliged to have both in your car.

most us states are not those places.

I had to call 911 a few months ago when I intervened in a guy robbing some tourists in downtown LA. LAPD showed up, guns drawn, in 3 minutes flat. I would have only been dead for about 2 minutes and 30 seconds if the guy had shot or stabbed me.

I don't know how you can expect police to get there faster; there is a limited number of police, they can't be within 500 feet of every single spot in a city. Hell, even if they are 100 feet away, they can't stop a guy from shooting you (which takes what, half a second?)

It just isn't practical to expect that kind of help at that kind of speed.

yeah, that's exactly the point. which is why people should understand that ultimately they are responsible for their own safety, implemented in whatever way they deem fit (and is legal).

If there was a real threat of ending up dead perhaps you shouldn’t have intervened in the first place. Once you called the police you should step aside and wait for them to arrive and do their job. They’re trained for that shit, you’re not. And by the way, 3 minutes response time sounds like an awful short. You know there are other emergencies happening at any single moment.

Stopping on the freeway to drag people out of their overturned cars is also incredibly dangerous. Should he have sat there for 20 minutes waiting for the fire department? They're trained for that, he's not.

I wasn't looking for trouble. I actively avoid danger. I stumbled across a scene where I was 10 feet away from a guy violently assaulting some very terrified and very gentle people. It looked like a bear mauling children. I didn't weigh the options beforehand I just responded to the situation, by getting the bear's attention.

I am obviously not blaming the police for arriving in "3 minutes flat". That's about as fast as is possible. I was trying to illustrate a real-world example of how things play out even under ideal circumstances.

Is the buying of the handgun just embellishment?

I thought that concealed carry was essentially illegal in California for private citizens, which is what it sounded like you were buying it for...

CA concealed carry varies from county to county. it is legal in a large % of the state.

generally it only takes one incident involving the police (or lack thereof) for someone to buy a gun or take other measures for their own personal safety. for me it involved an assault on the streets not a mile from my own home that basically ended with the police not giving a shit about me or my situation.

in reality, you are on your own. the police don't care about you. this is really, really tough for some people to swallow.

It's not just "in reality", it's codified into law:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/28scotus.html?_r=...

Or here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia

It's tough for people to swallow because they've been subtly led to think that the police do have an obligation ala "To Protect and to Serve" like the L.A.P.D. OFFICIAL motto.

http://www.lapdonline.org/history_of_the_lapd/content_basic_...

But it turns out that like corporate-customer-service-speak "How can I help you? You want to cancel? I'm sorry I can't do that it's against policy".

Now why is it that way? People in government and the police are worried that you could end up in a situation where the police are held accountable for literally every thing that doesn't go exactly perfect. Even when the reasons it went wrong were out of their control.

But I suspect that the balance has been shifted a bit too far towards giving the police the benefit of the doubt, at least re: people's expectations.

California (and Hawaii) are facing a Federal court decision that has a good chance of ending its per county "may issue" concealed carry regime. In the meantime, it won't hurt to buy weapons and become familiar with them. They'll be available at home, and unless California gun laws are like New Jersey's and a few other states, there's probably some way to legally carry one in your car with some ammo, even if it's not easily or quickly accessible and functional. It still might do you good, although for that use case a rifle is likely to better.

Concealed carry is in general not allowed in CA without a permit, but you are allowed to carry a handgun in a locked case in your trunk. That limitation is only for handguns by the way, you can keep a shotgun and other rifles with you in the car.

The fact that you _weren't_ in the middle of nowhere likely contributed to the delay. In densely populate areas, served by multiple PSAPs, it's not uncommon for cell phones to connect to the 'wrong' PSAP, since it's based on where the tower is located, not where the phone is.

I'm a firefighter/paramedic. Our district is on the edge of the county (PSAPs in this area are county-wide). It's not uncommon for a caller in our district to get connected to the 911 center in the neighboring county, if their phone happens to grab a tower there. This adds several minutes to the response time, as the call has to get transferred (which seems to be about as reliable as transferring calls in any generic call center...).

While I would never discourage someone from improving their ability to help themselves in an emergency, I think it's a stretch to say "911 is not there to help you." I'm sure the countless folks helped every day by a 911 response would disagree with you.

The truth is, there are _extremely_ few situations where a few minutes are going to make the difference between life and death. If someone is going to die within the next few minutes, they are probably going to die no matter who shows up...

I would absolutely recommend everyone take a CPR class every few years. It will cover the few situations where you really can make a difference by taking action right away (opening an airway, performing chest compressions, etc).

This adds a lot of necessary balance to the discussion.

That being said, I can show you literally dozens if not hundreds of situations where a few minutes (actually seconds) made all the difference between life and death.

Absolutely. That's still a very small fraction of 911 encounters.

It's also probably more true for law enforcement calls. In the case of EMS calls, really the only things that need to happen Right Now™ are basic airway maneuvers (positioning, Heimlich, etc), CPR, and defibrillation. If you can do those things (all of which are taught in a CPR class), you've got 90% of the EMS related 'seconds matter' scenarios covered.

Agreed on the EMS calls and, to your point, is why first aid / CPR training is important for pretty much everybody.

Do they teach defibrillation in CPR classes?

Yes (also an AHA CPR instructor...)

A 'basic' CPR class for the layperson includes CPR for adults and pediatrics, using an AED, and the Heimlich Maneuver

They do here (in the UK) but the modern kits are self teaching (literally, you open them up and they start talking) plus self monitoring (they fire pulses automatically).

Lots of businesses (mostly larger) have started having a unit on site as well.

I was fascinated by that technology when I did my CPR training last year.

If one in a million people called emergency services on any given day, hundreds of people would be calling every day. (This is a woefully low number: the greater Los Angeles would get a total of 18 calls a day; the greater Seattle area would get a total of 3-4.)

Even using this really low number, your "dozens" or "hundreds" would less <1% in under a year. That is, even using artificially low numbers, "dozens" or "hundreds" of cases are no more than freak events.

I'm not really sure what point you're trying to make with two sets of made up (and nonsensical) numbers.

A middle of the road urban fire company gets around 8,000 dispatches a year. Most of these calls are EMS, and run the gamut. The serious ones are all time sensitive -- someone having a cardiac incident or serious car accident needs immediate care from someone wight a clue.

I think the real point here is the bullshit/ignorant knee-jerk reactions "911 isn't there to help you" are just that. Thousands of peoples lives are touched in a positive way by efficient emergency services response.

I think you're violently agreeing: my point was that "dozens" or "hundreds" of times that it goes wrong, across the entire US, even if they're all from the same year is a statistical fluke we likely can do nothing about, and does not reflect any underlying problem with the emergency services. This is in direct reply to the person above me essentially making the argument "Well, yes, but I can show you exceptions!" Naturally, the first thing we should do is look at the rate of exceptions and see if that is reasonable for the process that we're talking about.

I was pointing out that even low balling the number of calls (a good way to get an estimate on the scale of a situation to reason about it), the number of cases the person was offering to present was such a small fraction, we could never get below that threshold of times things went weird. The reason for low balling the numbers in my estimate is that it made the resulting figures biased towards favoring the argument being made by the other person. If when the number start biased in their favor and still don't support their argument, it's reasonable to use an estimate to reject their claim.

The main thrust of my argument was essentially: the number of cases the person above my post offered to present was so small relative to the number of cases happening that they're mere anecdote, not data representing any underlying problem.

I would encourage you to understand what estimates are and how they're being used in arguments before making comments about numbers being nonsense or simply referring to them as made up. It simply makes you come across as mathematically ignorant.

The point is that you can do something about these "flukes" if you, as an individual, don't only rely on timely response by emergency services.

Again, of course there are cases for which knowing CPR or other training makes a difference - an obvious one is having basic first aid training around pools, particularly in the case of diving accidents leading to spinal injuries. Knowing the proper procedure to stabilize the person until paramedics can arrive on the scene does a lot to lessen the chance of secondary damage (eg, from the being moved wrong while trying to keep them from drowning).

I don't think that anyone is arguing that having more people know CPR or first aid is bad, but rather, the number of cases cited were too small to even infer that kind of information from: it's quite possible that there's nothing that could have been done for many of the cases the paramedics were late to respond without actual medical equipment onsite, ie, having more than just bystanders who know CPR or basic first aid. The gap in size between the cited number of cases and the number of cases that happen is too great, especially considering that the cited number of cases were from a biased selection, eg, only cases that matched a particular profile.

It's important that we not let emotion or our desire to do something about tragedies cloud our vision of what's actually helpful and what things actually matter.

I would expect for every case cited to me where someone saved a life being a bystander, I could find one where bystanders with basic training and good intentions ended up making the situation worse. That is, of course, beside the point, because both collections of anecdotes would be just that, and not actual data about what's a good idea.

Something to keep in mind is that Fremont is extremely spread out (source: I live there). In thick traffic it could take a while to respond.

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