FOOTHILLS COUNTY - Foothills Regional 911 is asking for the public’s help to prevent pocket dials and accidental calls after seeing a rapid increase so far in 2023.
It estimates that nearly 47 per cent of the almost 400 emergency calls received daily are accidental.
The sharp rise in accidental calls is largely attributed to a new Emergency SOS feature on smartphones and smartwatches that’s intended to allow users to quickly place a 911 call, but in many cases, is inadvertently dialing 911.
"People aren't aware that this is an actual feature, so we're getting a lot of accidental dials just because people don't know about it,” said Foothills Regional 911 acting superintendent Claire Dunn.
Dunn couldn’t provide an exact percentage increase in accidental calls this year, but said Foothills Regional 911 receives up to 180 of them every day.
Foothills Regional 911 covers a wide swath of southern Alberta, including Okotoks and Foothills County, stretching as far west as Banff and Crowsnest Pass and as far south as Cypress County.
“We had a lot of skiers and they were just out skiing and when they stop, the Apple Watch would detect that they have been in a car accident and then they would call us. We're getting a lot of that,” said Dunn.
“And with people being out in the summertime and being very active with hiking and camping and stuff, we are getting quite a few calls with cell phones being in cup holders and camping chairs and just at the bottom of people's purses,” she added.
Dunn said operators are trained to treat every 911 call as an emergency until it can be determined otherwise, which pulls resources away from actual emergencies. She said most accidental calls can be verified by operators, but in some instances they have to be transferred to first responders.
Many times, people don’t realize they have called 911 by mistake and when they do, they instinctively hang up. If you call 911 by accident, you are urged to stay on the line and advise the 911 operator that it was an accidental call and then answer the safety questions the operator will ask.
In an effort to reduce the number of accidental calls, Foothills Regional 911 recommends adjusting settings on the Emergency SOS feature on smartphones and smartwatches. It offers the following instructions:
IOS
1. Open settings
2. Select “Emergency SOS”
3. Adjust settings as desired.
Android
1. Open settings
2. Select “Safety & Emergency”
3. Select “Emergency SOS”
4. Adjust settings as desired.
