True, but if someone doesn't know what 3-short/3-long/3-short means, what are the chances they're going to know what any other distress signal sounds like?

In general, the most you can hope for with someone like that is that they'll realise that a pattern of whistles, being repeated over and over and over, is something that somebody whose phone number is 911 might be interested in.

A few years ago, a small tornado went through a recreational campground at Pine Lake, north of here; several people were killed, and many more injured. A local resident got some brilliant film footage of it as it went by his house. When he called up the Weather office a few weeks later to see if the film was of any use to them, they asked why he hadn't called 911 to report the tornado.

Stunned silence apparently ensued. <img src="/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />