Thank you all for your answers.

What brought this up was remembering a woman in OR who was on her land line carry-around phone, and tripped over a toy, fell backwards onto some kind of glass coffee table, which broke.

Her phone went flying, but she screamed to her friend (in CA) that the large shards of glass were holding her in place (sticking into her) and she was bleeding.

Her friend called her local 911 and told them what had happened, and that her friend was in OR. The dispatcher just couldn't seem to understand the problem. The friend gave the dispatcher her friend's name, address and phone number. The dispatcher called the number and reported that the phone was busy, so she couldn't verify the incident.

The call was finally relayed, but it took over 45 minutes for paramedics to get the call and get to the woman's home.

I was visualizing a roadside life-threatening emergency while trying to deal with a brain-dead dispatcher back home.

Thanks!

Sue