Planning for a 911 Outage

For the second time in about a week - first during the Derecho in the DC region , and yesterday in Calgary - a major city has lost it's 911 service.

It's a good reminder that we shouldn't expect the calvary to always arrive and save the day, even when we're surrounded by all the amenitites of urban life.

Good point jac. One should always be as prepared as possible to take care of their own when needed. Even in a widespread disaster type situation, where emergency services are overloaded, you may need to fend for yourself until help can arrive.

A situation like this is another good reason to get yourself and your family first aid and cpr certified. More than just a delay in recieving medical care, there might not be anyone on the other end of the phone to walk you through emergency medical care until the EMTs arrive.

Step #1 in preparing for a 911 outage is to have hard-copies of the non-911 actual phone numbers of the emergency services you might need: especially police, fire, ambulance.

And go ahead and put these emergency numbers in your cell phone - for reference even if there is no cell service.

911 could crash without a disaster event precipitating it.

For the sake of neighbors, it would be good to have multiple copes of the various emergency numbers.

And, of course, always have sufficient fuel in your tank to drive your own vehicle to a hospital if need be.

Does your area have a 411 information number? 411 should also be able to direct a phone call to local police, fire, etc. but not as quickly as 911.

I do not disagree with First Aid.

CPR, however, is another story. The odds of survival of a cardiac arrest in the absence of quick access to a defibrillator is close to nil.

Even with the presence of a defibrillator, the survival rate of a cardiac arrest is not high. In a hospital with access to a code team, it is an unusual thing for a cardiac arrest to result in a patient who eventually WALKS out of the hospital.

Admittedly, the average hospitalized patient is much sicker than someone otherwise healthy suffering from a cardiac arrest due to a lightning strike.

Respiratory arrest OTOH is likely survivable.

Conway Yee

We were taught that CPR could bring a kid back, but unless you can get help quickly adult CPR wasn't likely to work.

On the other hand a retired sheriff's deputy I know saved two adults with CPR.

Just to add to this, I think this is a good example of why a Wilderness first aid course is better to take than a regular Red Cross or St. John's course. Wilderness first aid is taught with the underlying assumption that an ambulance is hours, or even days, away.


I think this is along the same lines, but the instructor of the wilderness first aid I took said that CPR can often be more effective in the wild than in the city. The basic premise was that in the wild you are less likely to be performing CPR on someone in poor health with a weak heart, but rather it is more likely you would be performing it on an otherwise healthy and active individual who suffered some sort of trauma (e.g., lightning, a fall, etc). In other words, you are more likely to run into someone in distress who had an otherwise healthy heart and therefore they were more likely to be revived.

Don't get your hopes up. The success rate is typically around 30%, even in the best of circumstances. I personally am 0 for 2 in outdoors settings.

Training in First Aid is highly desirable, even if 911 is functioning fully.

You are absolutely correct. My post was a bit misleading; better odds do not necessarily mean good odds.

I also recall we had a good conversation about when CPR should cease and some of the personal and emotional aspects around that.

That is one of MANY reasons why we are trying to get more members of our Scouting District Wilderness First Aid training. It is offered within our council, but rarely near us. We are at the extreme outskirts of our council and can't get anyone to come here for the training til we get at least 25 people willing to take it. Of course I am on the list, first aid training is one of my MANY preparedness shortfalls I am working on.

Depending on your Scouting group, another option may be to take a wilderness first aid course put on by some other organization and get your group to reimburse your costs. Assuming things work the same where you are, they are paying for the course out of their own bank account either way.

My group paid for my first aid recert when it came due.

I 1000% agree with the "get trained in first aid" - I wish "EMT-B" was part of the standard curriculum in high schools.

Nice sentiment. Won't work in most places.

For example, our Firehouse. The phone number is 610-982-5710. Go ahead, call it. I'll wait. Unless you happend to call when there was someone there - which isn't very often - you'll get voicemail. It's a volunteer company - as are all of the surrounding companies. Unstaffed, response is via pagers & siren triggered by - you guessed it - the 911 center. While a 911 outage would not prevent them from tripping the pagers/siren, the steps that lead up to that dispatch would be missing. In fact, even big, paid fire companies leave the firehouse empty when on a call.

EMS, a paid service, is dispatched in the same way, and while they are staffed, if they are enroute back to station from a hospital trip, they are dispatched by radio...from the 911 center. Again, empty building, nobody there to answer the phone if they are on a call.

Police are a little different - they do have staff on duty 24/7 but they are not really equipped to self-dispatch.

My point: Don't think that having the phone number will matter.

I once did CPR on a dead guy for 40 minutes.

I wish we had stopped, but policy was to keep CPR going once started until a doctor or coroner says stop. His wife, an RN, had started CPR about 30 minutes before we arrived at the wilderness location. He had no pulse, no respiration and was getting colder the whole time. Me and a firehouse buddy continued CPR as we hauled him out of a rough terrain area in the woods.

Get the local number for the dispatch center if your local firehouse is commonly unmanned. Or call the police station -- they should be able to reach a dispatcher for the fire department on your behalf.

All 9-1-1 centers have "7-digit emergency numbers" that alarm companies, OnStar, etc. call to report emergencies and incidents. These are the numbers that you want for a 9-1-1 outage. Depending upon where you live, you might have one, two, or three 9-1-1 centers that dispatch your area. For example, where I live, the local 9-1-1 center dispatches police only, a "regional" center dispatches fire and EMS. Generally these numbers are published in the local phone directory (remember those?), and sometimes on agency web sites. If in doubt, call the local agency on their business line and ask.

It makes a difference in Washington, D.C., where the Metro police have neighborhood substations (I memorized the nearest one's phone number years ago) and other jurisdictions (such as the Capitol Police) can also respond and also have non-911 phone numbers.

Having the phone numbers certainly won't hurt.



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As I said, Police have staffing. That's 33% of the solution, which is better than 0% I guess.

The figures I've seen are 40% with the combination of CPR and defilbrator if the defilbrator is applied within 5 minutes. (Swedish national "CPR register", several thousand cases). If you don't do CPR but still apply the defilbrator within five minutes the survival rate is 20%. The risk of permanent nevrological damage also increases massively. If the defilbrator is applied in the 6-10 minutes window the survival rate is 30% with CPR and 10% without.

Add to this that the quality of CPR is likely to vary considerably among these cases, but it's close to impossible to correct for that. There is no way of knowing how many of the fatalities that could have lived if they had received higher quality CPR.

Yes, more than half of the people with a stopped heart will die. But immediate CPR does save lives - if you can apply defilbrator within minuttes. And advanced hospital treatment within hours is absolutely essential for the quality of life for those you're able to resurrect.

I have no information about how the survival rate is distributed across fitness and age, but I wouldn't be surprised if the chances are much better for a healty, not too old person that receives immediate CPR followed up by quick defilbrator and a trip to the hospital. Heart failure isn't something that exclusively happen to people in very poor health. Even athletes die from hearth related problems.

The number of fatalities from people not receiving CPR when they needed it is 100%. I suspect the number of potential rescuers that experience the guilt of not trying because they thought the odds were against them is about the same 100%. The odds being against us not a good reason to not learn or try CPR in my books.

Here is an account of a pertinent incident. Sometimes we do indeed win...


Yellowstone National Park (ID,MT,WY)
Visitor’s Life Saved Through Effective EMS Response

Dispatcher Martha Downing received a 911 call on the evening of July 19th reporting that a 67-year-old man had collapsed in the RV park at Fishing Bridge. The man’s wife had witnessed the collapse and quickly began CPR; she also began pounding on the walls of the trailer to gain the attention of people in neighboring campsites. The neighbor who responded was a member of an ambulance company who carried an automated external defibrillator (AED) on his travels and administered multiple shocks.

Law enforcement ranger Morgan Leech, park medic Eric Amundson, paramedics Trenton Harper and Ben Dowdy, and SCA John Hinshaw were among the park’s first responders. They provided ALS interventions and were able to restore a pulse. The man was transported to the Lake Clinic and taken by life flight to Eastern Idaho Medical Center. Prior to departing Lake Clinic, he was alert and talking, and the initial report was that he would have no apparent deficits.

A good lesson to take away is that early CPR and AEDs work. The man was not breathing and his heart was not beating on its own for close to twenty minutes.
[Submitted by Bonnie Schwartz, Deputy Chief Ranger]

Done cpr idk 200 times ? I can count on one hand folks who came back and lived. 99% needing crp are old with years of health issues,not going to happen.

Now a young healthy person, IF it is witnessed, and crp started right away and defib soon after ya got a chance. My BC saved a guy at the gym, as well as my crew at a gym kinda. That place is always full of DR's and the head cardiac surgeon from a heart hospital started to work on him with in seconds. ..

Look I worked a few wind storms and the FD ( we got 20 co's)was backed up HOURS, just due to some limbs and wires down.

One blizzard we could not get through, trucks got stuck or blocked by stuck cars and trucks. Car fires burned themselves out before we could ever get near . We ran out of o2 before the ambulance crew ( after getting stuck and walking) could make it in.

I recommend good life and home insurance .

Numbers to our firehouses are not given out as folks would call the wrong ones,or we would be out and that wastes time .You can use the pull box out front then if were out another co. will be dispatched to that firehouse.Also at times of widespread emergency at least one rig per house would be parked out front,to make it noticable.

But in cities folks seem to know where are .

Done cpr idk 200 times ? I can count on one hand folks who came back and lived. 99% needing crp are old with years of health issues,not going to happen.
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Ive done a ton of CPR in ICU so better outcomes.But in the major play,most ICU care is end of life care and pretty pointless IMO.

Ive lived a good live,dont want to struggle for every last breath at whatever costs involved,Im prepared to make a peaceful dignified (comfort measures) exit when my number gets punched.