Cell phones and 911

[AlmostThere]

This popped in my head tonight...
When you make a 911 call from your cell phone while traveling out of state, does it automatically go to the nearest 911 emergency place, or does it dial 911 at the area code of your cell phone number?

[avalen]

hmmm, I used to know that answer, but for the life of me I just cannot pull it out
of my brain cells at the moment. Will have to ask my daughter, I remember we
talked about it before and the call centers are not always IN that town where the
emergency is, in some circumstances while in Phoenix here, the call would go to
a call center in Denver (weird, I know) and then be rerouted into Phoenix. Right
now my daughter works in Phoenix but picks up calls over several districts, I
think she said 28 different districts. When she worked for Scottsdale she only
picked up Scottsdale, but now in Phoenix she also picks up Scottsdale. Anytime
you call 911 and they stay on the line with you, like what you see on tv, the hands
are typing info to another computer who has another guy monitoring that one and
they in turn type to another computer yet, like if its fire dept they send fire dept
or if its police needed, they send police, rescue, etc, hope you get the idea. That
is why the lady on the phone will ask you so many questions.

[VickieP]

I know when we had our "incident" in Gathier MS, I wasn't sure about the pronunciation of the name of the town, the 911 operator knew what it was and connected me to the police dispatcher.

[Echo]

A call to 911 on a cell phone will connect you to the closest dispatcher available. But it might not be in your immediate area for sure. I've called 911 on my cell before when I was still driving big truck and always had good luck at connecting to a close dispatcher. My cell will lock it's self into emergency mode and if I forget to change it, it will stay locked to 911.

[retiredhappy]

Seems to me that since you're bouncing off a nearby tower when you're traveling it would go to the nearest 911 BUT you will need to tell them where you are since they won't have a house address. I had an incident while driving in Colorado (my friend Carole passed out while we were driving). I got a local dispatcher but did need to tell her we were on Hwy XXX about 20 miles east of Trinidad. They had a paramedic to me within about five minutes. I was really impressed. It turned out to be something minor (took a pain pill on empty stomach) but scared the devil out of me. Ever since then when I'm driving I try to make a note of the mile markers or exit numbers as we pass.

[AlmostThere]

That's good advice, Karen....and thanks to all who responded!