When an accident happens, people probably look for someone who could help them. Luckily, we have existing emergency hotlines we can call 24/7.
However, have you ever wondered what those people behind the emergency hotlines feel when answering calls? No worries, because these people from the Reddit Community who operate at 911, shared their haunting calls of all time.
1. Alone and Scared
I was a 911 Operator in Mobile, AL, the day Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. We started getting lots of calls from New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast for some reason.
I guess they started routing to us after all the 911 centers to the west of us started going down. Anyway, I got a call from a woman who said she was trapped in her house on Gordon Street between Florida and Law.
I was confused at first because we have a Florida Street in Mobile, and after checking and double checking and not being able to find her address, I asked her what city she was calling from, and she said, "I'm in New Orleans.”
I tried to route her to New Orleans 911 and the New Orleans Fire Department but could not get through. She started screaming and said the water was coming up into the attic where she was.
I told her to find something heavy and break the attic vent out so she could get out onto her roof, but the vent was too small for her to crawl through. She sat down and started crying. I told her I would stay on the line with her for as long as she wanted me to.
I stayed on the line and listened as she cried, prayed, cussed, and prayed some more. A little while later, I could hear her struggling to keep her head and phone above water, and then the phone went dead.
To this day, I don't know if she lived or died. I quit 911 three months after Katrina.
[deleted]
2. Closet Safety
I had a woman call in who was hiding in her closet and told me her ex-boyfriend was breaking into her house. She told me that they had a violent history. I got her information and told her to do what she needed to do to stay safe and leave the line open no matter what.
While officers were en route, I heard him come in through a window and start beating her. He heard sirens coming and took off.
Luckily, since she left the line open, I was able to let the officers know when he took off, and they caught him near the apartment.
I think the worst part was that two minutes after he left, I sat there listening to the woman weeping and not being able to comfort her because she was too far away to hear me.
[deleted]
3. Own Way
In true Reddit style, I'm not quite the intended target of this question, as I don't actually answer the calls myself... But my job involves me listening to many of them after they've happened...
The one that sticks with me the most was a man who was paralyzed from the waist down and had phoned up to tell us that he was mid-way through attempting to amputate his own legs at the thigh using nothing but a hack-saw and a Stanley knife.
He'd laid newspaper down on the floor and everything in an attempt not to get blood on the carpet.
Naturally, not long into the call, he passed out due to blood loss... Grim stuff.
Ahgwg
4. Empty Car
Another NYC - received an anonymous call that a Patrol Car (RMP) was parked in the middle of a street in Harlem with the doors open and no Police officer in sight.
We used to get tons of prank calls, but after a while, your gut tells you when they're real. They found the Officer several blocks away. He had been shot and then dragged by the perp's car for several blocks.
Terrible.
Mizcreant908
5. His Mom
Two Christmases ago, my uncle (who's a police officer) was working during the day.
He got to work when they got a call from an elderly woman who was having a heart attack and gave him the address.
It turns out it was his mother.
He got there and tried CPR before the EMTs got there, but there was nothing they could do.
[deleted]
6. Haunting Moment
Got a call a few years ago, lady's house was on fire, and her daughter was stuck in a back room.
The flames were too much and too high, and she couldn't get through them to get to the girl.
So I got to sit on the phone and listen to A) a little girl burn to death and B) the mom scream and cry as she watched.
It was 5 years ago, and the sounds still haunt me.
FreakInThePen
7. Self Defense
My sister got a call from a woman whose son was out playing football in the yard. He threw the ball over a fence and jumped over the fence to retrieve it.
Everything went normal there, but when he landed in the neighbor's yard, the guy was on his back porch, with his jiggys deep in a pig.
When the cops came, he said he did it because his wife was a crack witch, and he didn't want to get AIDS.
blackbutters
8. The Kid
There was a young boy about 3 trapped in his parent's trailer that was on fire. We knew he was in there. The grandmother had gotten all the kids out, but that one. She thought maybe he went and hid or something.
The fire department did everything they could, even at great personal risk, but in the end, the child died of smoke inhalation.
It was a painful 1-2 hours as they fought the fire and tried to save him, though, after the first half hour, we were pretty sure he couldn't have survived.
My son was about the same age as that boy, and it hit me hard. I probably should have gotten grief counseling or something, but they didn't do that for dispatchers at the time.
[deleted]
9. Brave Little One
Answered a call at 3 am from a 7-year-old girl who found mom unconscious on the couch and not breathing. The child knew her address, which was in the middle of nowhere. It's a 25-minute response at best.
I had to talk the kid through getting mom off the couch one arm and one leg at a time because she was too small to just pull her to the floor. Then, we started CPR instructions.
The kid did great.
They had no neighbors and did not know the phone number of their dad (divorced). We ended up getting Mom breathing again just as the ambulance pulled up. I cried like a baby when that was over. I was so relieved for that child.
LovesScience
10. Two Angels
I DO actually work for a 911 center. The call that has stuck with me the most was a call for two unconscious toddler twin girls. The mom called frantically because both weren't breathing. I stayed on the phone until help arrived, but there wasn't much we could do.
The full story (which we rarely get, by the way) is that the family went to bed early in the morning.
The twins woke up about two hours before Mom. The 8-year-old took them to her bed and covered them with a blanket, causing them to both suffocate.
The really disturbing part is that by the time the officers and paramedics got there, the mom had changed their clothes and rubbed baby oil on them to give them that "life-life look.”
No criminal charges were filed.
Thnblu9
11. Tons Of Guilt
My grandmother was a fire dispatcher a long, long time ago since she passed away in the early '90s. So, this likely pre-dates 911 service.
She told me a story about a call that she received from a parent whose house was on fire.
Neither parent had gotten their child out of the house, and she was pleading with her to get the fire department there quickly since the fire was too bad to go back in.
Suffice it to say the child did not make it.
I can't even imagine the guilt that the couple had and the blame that they shared or even blaming each other for not grabbing their child.
Porkpants81
12. Scattered Everywhere
My mom was a 911 dispatcher in the early 90's (I was 5 years old-ish) in Washington State. When I got older, I remember asking her about some of the calls that she could still recall. One in particular was pretty bad.
She was working one year on Halloween night, and around 10 or 11 pm, she had a call come in that a couple of guys were driving around town with a dummy or something dragging behind their truck.
The dummy was falling apart, and pieces of clothing/plastic were being torn off and scattered around the city. Being Halloween, it seemed like a prank, but she had a patrol car trying to find and stop the truck. As time went by, more and more people started to call in about it.
Eventually, the patrol car caught up with the truck, and turned out it was a person. The guys had gone to a store earlier, and when they left, they had backed their truck into an elderly man whose clothes got caught in the rear bumper or whatnot.
The two guys never even knew they were dragging around another human being across town for miles. The elderly man had passed away, and those pieces of clothing scattered around town were his clothing, flesh, and body parts.
Still gives me chills.
Turkeyshoes
13. Tons Of Horror
I was a criminal justice major in college. As one of my summer jobs/internships, I was a non-emergency dispatcher at a 911 center. I was surprised about the number of emergency calls I got on the "non-emergency" lines.
A couple of examples: an old guy mad at the minority kids playing in the street in front of his house threatened to go outside with his shotgun and confront their mom because the police were taking too long to come to answer his complaint.
A lady called saying she found a guy passed out in her driveway and wanted to know if she should ignore it or if we should send an ambulance. We sent an ambulance.
The one that sticks with me, though, is an elderly lady calling, saying that her grandson and husband were burning trash in the backyard. Something exploded, and her husband was on fire.
Her grandson was 8-9 years old, and she couldn't do anything about it. When the fire dept got there, they said his skin was like melted plastic, and as soon as they tried to get him on the backboard, it came off, exposing all his organs, etc., and he died en route to the hospital.
Their grandson watched everything.
Squidssential
14. Went Panic Mode
For me, it was a lady calling to say she was just taken advantage of and beaten. Someone had broken into her house.
Followed by, "Oh my god, he's back, he's back! Help!" Then the line goes dead. I send officers for an active home invasion and have them standing by.
She was lying; her boyfriend had broken up with her for cheating on him, and she threatened to call the police if he left.
He did, and she followed through. She got arrested.
[deleted]
15. Unanswered Questions
Ex-GF's mom is an operator:
Call early Sunday morning from a 6-year-old girl saying a man in the backyard was making a lot of noise. She said the man had her parents, and they were both moving.
The little girl said the man knew she was in the house and told her to call the police.
She then said the man was coming inside.
The phone fell to the floor/ground, which was the end of the call.
Still gives me the chills. Lots of unanswered questions.
gooncraw
16. Unexpected Event
I answered a call from a guy who was screaming about how a relative of his that he found outside was bleeding from the head and was lying on the ground. It was a call that was way out there in the boondocks, so I was going to be on the line with this guy for a while.
It wasn't helping that he was freaking out and yelling at me nearly the entire time. When I was going through questions with him about the patient's condition, he was yelling, "HE'S BLEEDIN' FROM THE HEAD! SEND HELP!"
We already had an ambulance, police, and fire on the way. Suddenly, during the assessment, he yells, "HE'S NOT BREATHING!!" At that point, I do my best to calm him down and guide him through CPR instructions.
He did a very good job, and the patient started breathing again after about 300 compressions.
Once that happened, I immediately went to the control bleeding protocol and asked him to get a dry, clean towel or cloth and apply it to the wound on his head.
The guy would not do it.
At this point, he was an emotional wreck, and didn't want to leave him no matter how much I tried to talk to and reason with him. I was practically begging the guy to go get something to control the bleeding.
He repeatedly said that he didn't want to leave him. After a while, the police showed up on the scene first. I asked him if they were there, and he said yes.
Just before I was about to hang up and let them talk to him, I heard a police officer say, "Sir, I need you to step away from that gun on the ground..."
ARatherOddOne
17. Run For Her Life
I once took a call from a kidnapping victim who jumped out of a moving car in an office park. She had no idea where she was, and I couldn't get a valid location on her cell phone (this was in 2004), only the nearest cell tower.
Usually, I would ask a caller in her situation to start looking in mailboxes for mail with an address on the envelope. But this was an office park with mail slots that she couldn't access.
She was literally running for her life while I was on the phone with her, hiding behind dumpsters and bushes. At the same time, the kidnappers patrolled the office park.
The terror in her voice was gut-wrenching. She had already been beaten, and she was afraid that if they found her, they would kill her.
After about five minutes of this terrifying call, she was finally able to find a business sign on one of the windows in the complex. I frantically searched for the business address, and the radio dispatcher aired the location, to which at least a dozen officers responded.
They found the suspect vehicle quickly, and a short foot chase ensued - the K9 officer ended that in no time. The first officer to reach the caller ordered a victim's advocate because of her condition.
I had to take a few minutes off after that call.
Crux1836
18. Worst First Night
I was a 911 dispatcher in my very small hometown. On my first night on my own (without guidance from my supervisor), I had a call that there was a bad accident slightly out of my jurisdiction and that a group of young men was involved, including several of my childhood friends (I had recently graduated from high school).
I knew there had been a fatality, but I didn't know who it was, and my own speculations were quite scary as I waited to hear.
My job was to contact the family of one of the boys in the accident and to tell them which hospital he was taken to. I knew the kid, and I had to tell his mom he was in a serious accident, but I couldn't identify myself.
Then she called me back when she got to the hospital that they couldn't find her son. We went back and forth several times as I tried to figure out where the disconnect of information was.
Eventually, I found out they couldn't find him because he was in the morgue - he was the one who died. I felt like an idiot for telling his mom to go to the hospital, but those were my instructions, and it was the best information I had at the time.
I later made the mistake of talking to EMS, who was on the scene for that wreck, and asking for details. My friend had been entrapped while the driver was able to get out. Flames began to spread in the car, but they couldn't get my friend out.
EMTs pulled on his arm, trying anything to get him out, but it was so hot his flesh just came off.
And he died screaming, alive, and burning to death. Probably the worst way to go, and my colleagues had to stand there watching it all happen. Those images have burned themselves into my mind permanently.
I went to my friend's funeral and couldn't say a word about what I knew about the accident. People say things like, "He went peacefully - it was on impact." Well, that wasn't true at all, but it was a nice sentiment to spread, and I would never correct it.
I think I was probably the only person there who knew what really happened, and that was both comforting and very difficult to manage.
I was haunted for a while.
I didn't do anything wrong, but someone I knew and cared about died in a horrific way, and I couldn't share those details with anyone who knew him. My family and friends pumped me for information (small town), and I shared as little as possible, which was the right thing to do in all ways, but it was still hard not to be able to talk about it.
I did tell myself that I would never have a call worse than that, and in six years of dispatching, it was true.
My first night was my worst.
slamdunkbrunch
19. Unforeseen Result
I work as a 911 operator/dispatcher in Florida. Last week, I took a call from a woman who sounded pretty scared. Whispering into the phone, she said that somebody had broken into her house.
This isn't the first time this type of call has come in, but it's always been a friend or a relative coming over unannounced or a mentally unstable caller thinking that a plant on a table wrapped behind a window curtain is a burglar (true story). As such, I was gathering information but not yet convinced that it was a legitimate burglary.
A minute into the call, the woman says she hears a gunshot in the background. I don't hear anything, but I note on the screen that, per the caller, shots have been fired. Just then, I hear something close enough to the phone that it sounds like it's coming from the next room over... pop, pop, pop.. pop.. pop.. pop.. pop.. pop.. pop.. pop.
Obvious gunshots. At this point, it hits me that, yeah, this is actually happening, and this was either a home invasion or somebody is defending their home with force. I quickly ended the call and passed the caller to the sheriff's office for their portion of the interrogation.
Hours later, a hospital in a neighboring county called and asked if we were looking for any gunshot victims. They had a drive-up without any good explanation for how it happened, and it happened to be one of our burglars.
It had been a relative of my caller who came across the burglars in the house and opened fire on them, hitting one before they took off.
jumalaw
20. Twisted Events
Ok, so this is actually a story my brother told me when he was an EMT. An elderly woman called in a missing person's report because she had not seen her husband in a couple of days.
The police had helped her search all over town and searched neighbors' homes (It was a small town, and she lived in the center of a row of townhouses) but could not find her husband.
A week later, another call came in from her neighbors, stating that strange smells were coming from the old woman's house.
That's when my brother got the call. The elderly woman who had originally filed the missing person's report had fainted from shock and bumped her head but was still alive.
The police searched the house and traced the smell to the attic. When they opened the attic (pulling the string from the ceiling), the body of the woman's husband fell out.
He had been putting away some keepsakes, and his wife had closed him in the attic by accident.
Friendlyvoices
21. Unfortunate Scene
Not me, but my friend's dad is a police dispatcher. Just this past year, he got a call from a friend of his daughter that she found her dad passed out in the house and not breathing.
Her dad had died of a major heart attack.
She had just had a baby and already had huge mental health issues, so the loss of her dad was obviously devastating.
My friend's dad (the dispatcher) immediately texted his daughter to get in touch with the other girl because he thought she might try and hurt or kill herself.
Fortunately, she didn't, but I can only imagine getting the call from a family friend that their dad stopped breathing.
LeCanada
22. Devastating News
Two of my aunts are paramedics who happened to have been working together one day. They get a call for an unresponsive but alive man involved in a hit-and-run.
They got on the scene and found it was my cousin (their nephew). They couldn't revive him, and he died in their ambulance on the way to the hospital.
To top it off, my other aunt, the victim's mother, has been listening to the police scanner and heard that a volunteer firefighter had been hit near my cousin's address. Since it is a very small community, there was no doubt about who it was. My aunt found out her son was dead on the police scanner.
Turns out it was my cousin's brother-in-law who did it.
addictinsane
23. Traumatizing Event
I once got a call from a sobbing teenage boy. Turns out his twin brother slipped on some ice on stone stairs and hit his head pretty hard at the bottom.
I had to stay on the phone with the kid and attempt to keep him calm while paramedics were on their way.
His twin brother died a couple of days later in the critical care unit.
This one hit me really hard because I have a twin brother myself. I took the next week off work to spend time with him.
Threshecutioner
24. Held Long
The most disturbing one was when I had a call from an elderly woman who'd had a stroke. She had attempted to call 911 before but dropped her phone, which had shattered.
So she spent 2 hours crawling to the bedroom to reach her landline to call 911 again. I answered the phone and basically kept her calm and reassured while getting the ambulance and officers on the way.
Her door was locked, so I had to send an officer to her husband's place of employment to get him started at the house to unlock it for EMS. She wasn't hysterical, and she was breathing fine and everything, but she kept thanking me for being so kind and helping her and staying on the phone with her until EMS reached her.
I was just doing my job, and I didn't think I was doing anything special. Still, I cried after that phone call just cause I wouldn't want any other 911 dispatcher to do the same if it were my grandmother's call.
[deleted]
25. Little Innocent One
A very young girl once called because her mother told her to, and she had no understanding of the emergency situation.
Girl: [Shouting can be heard in the background] Um, my mommy told me to call you
Girl: She says that the bad man is a-a- [More shouting] A... a salt thing her?
Girl: [More yelling] And we live at home.
Girl: [Yelling becomes more frantic] Hour ad..dress.
Girl: [Gunshot can be heard.] Ooh! Fireworks!
I was broken. The kid was clearly innocent.
dralcax
26. Pain of Helplessness
I'm a recently hired dispatcher. I heard some crazy calls while going through the academy that the instructor had personally answered.
The one call I heard that bothered me the most was from a hysterical mother locked in her vehicle that was on fire. She was so hysterical she couldn't unlock the doors. She tells the dispatcher that she has 2 kids, and you can hear them crying in the back of the car.
The dispatcher is trying to calm her down, but it's hopeless. The mother is screaming and banging on the window, trying to break it. After about 2 minutes of this, the mother then calls the kids up to her, and you can hear them all crying and coughing. The worst part is when you can clearly hear one of the kids (who sounded about aged 4-5) say, "Mommy, I'm going to die!"
Dispatcher Academy was painful to go through but enlightening.
[deleted]
27. Worst Accident
My sister and her husband are both dispatchers in SLC. Between the two of them (25 years in the business)
I've heard a lot of stories.
But the worst was when my sister took a call from a hysterical woman whose husband had rolled over on their two-month-old baby sleeping in their bed and smothered him :(
jensengoblover
28. Two Disturbing Calls
My cousin is a small-town 911 operator, and I once asked her this exact question. There were two that came to mind for her. The first one was a shooting over a deer stand on the first day of hunting season.
I can't remember if she was on the call during or after the shooting, but I know it made national news.
The second one was that she got a call from her brother. He found someone breaking into his garage and was standing there holding a gun at the intruder, and then she heard a scuffle and a gun go off.
She said her heart stopped and dropped into the pit of her stomach because she didn't know if he was still alive or not.
Spoiler: He's still alive.
Mrswhiskers
29. Bad Situation
I got a 911 call about a vehicle that ran off the road. The caller told me that the female driver was unconscious but had a pulse.
He then proceeded to tell me that the passenger was fatal. I asked if he had checked for a pulse, and he told me he had not.
It was a young child that had been decapitated.
I asked him to find anything he could to cover the child because I didn’t want the mother to regain consciousness and have that be the last image she had of her child.
Ok-Enthusiasm-4918
30. Long Time
It was 9:30 am. I'd been on shift since 7 am. All the ambulances had checked in for morning mileage and radio checks. All was good. The call comes in on the emergency line.
"MY SON IS NOT BREATHING."
Ok, we got this. Start going through the steps of checking for a pulse/breath while dispatching the closest ambulance.
I'm almost to the part where we start CPR when the ambulance calls back, "Dispatch, our rig is dead." YOU GOT TO BE FREAKING KIDDING ME. YOU CALLED IN THIS MORNING WITH A RADIO CHECK. DID YOU NOT CHECK YOUR GODDAMN AMBULANCE?
Nearest ambulance is ONE WHOLE COUNTY OVER. 30 minutes. 30 minutes for a situation that needs IMMEDIATE medical intervention.
The mother is screaming on the phone, crying. The sister comes in and starts screaming the name of her brother.
I have to tell them the ETA for an ambulance is 30 minutes.
It's been almost 10 years since I was in EMS Dispatch, and I occasionally wake up in a cold sweat thinking about that call.
[deleted]
31. No Ambulance
I worked the UK equivalent (999), and my job was to route calls to Fire, Police, or Ambulance. I had no medical training, and the calls that had me quit were as follows:
About 9 at night, a woman called calmly asking for an ambulance as her husband had passed out. After 10+ minutes of trying to get London Ambulance to answer the phone, she hangs up. I stayed in the line, and another 10 minutes later, they answered. I relayed the situation and address, and they confirmed they’d do a drive-by (basically, get the nearest available unit to visit the property - and see what’s happening).
Half an hour later, the same woman called back for the same reason for calling. I was on hold for London Ambulance to answer for 10+ minutes. Out of the blue, she came onto the phone and calmly said, ‘Don’t bother, he just died,’ and put the phone down again.
This time, it didn’t disconnect, and I heard the same woman's most heart-wrenching wail of despair. She then goes into a teary rant about how useless everything is and how the London Ambulance killed her husband before the line cuts off again.
I got through to the ambulance service and explained everything. The operator confirmed the drive-by got canceled because the ambulance it was assigned to had finished its shift.
I didn’t sleep that night and cried more tears than I ever had done previously. The next day, I went into the office an hour before my shift started, emptied my locker, gave all my work stuff to my boss, and quit on the spot.
UncleSeph
32. Wrong Information
It doesn’t keep me up at night, but I think about it occasionally. Had a daughter call in for her elderly mother, who experienced chest pains. 10 minutes pass, and I call for an eta. They tell me they’re there.
The daughter gave me the wrong address. They had recently moved, and she gave the old address. The chest pains turned to trouble breathing. Eta 10 minutes.
Mother isn’t responding.
The daughter was crying over the line. Paramedics arrive, perform CPR, and even use the defibrillator. Sadly, she didn’t make it. I heard all this over the phone at the time. It hit me a bit hard, but you get over it.
Judge_Open
33. Caused A Trauma
Happened to a friend of mine, but it’s something I always think of, and the thought just haunts me. We worked in the Police emergency call center, and she covered my shift as I wasn’t feeling too good.
She was working the day of the Christchurch Mosque Shooting. She said the phones were going off with people calling about the shootings.
She spoke to a lady who was in the mosque; the lady was frantically screaming, and she could hear the gun going off and all the screaming in the mosques.
The lady stopped screaming but could still hear what was happening in the mosque. She still has PTSD from the event and took time off work. We don’t know who the lady was or where she is, but this call will always haunt us.
It always scares me that that could’ve been me.
Negative_Nanzy
34. Woke Up And Everything’s Gone
I was training to be an EMT before I decided that it was too high-stress for my personality.
One of the student placements involved spending a night shift in the control room with an operator.
Just as morning was breaking, an elderly gentleman called us, bawling his eyes out. He said he’d woken up to find his wife of many decades cold and dead beside him in bed.
I didn’t stay long after that.
partaylikearussian
35. Dad Instincts
My Dad is a paramedic in the UK. He told me that dead or dying babies are the worst calls to go to. You hear it on the radio, and your heart just sinks.
Two calls he told me about have really stuck in my mind.
One of them, a woman, had been cut in half by a train. Because of the positioning, she was still alive as the bleeding was plugged.
When they moved her, she died.
The second one was a 16-year-old girl who had died on the train tracks after touching the live rail. Dad said calls like that aren't uncommon, but because I was about 17 (f) at the time, all he could think about was that it could have been me.
fried_egg_on_toast
36. Poor Wife
Hubby, a former dispatcher, worked nights by herself and I think, hadn't even worked a year there. She knew the officers really well since she was obviously the only person there.
The officer pulled a guy over for a routine stop, but for whatever reason, he pulled a gun and shot the officer, then took off. The officer calls in to dispatch, so she's calling EMTs and all that and gives the mile marker.
From my understanding, other cops got on the scene first, and we're with him. EMT calls back for the location, and she somehow gave the wrong one...off by like a mile.
She was pretty shaken by it as it was someone she considered a friend.
He lived.
She found out about the mix-up about a week later. It didn't seem to affect anything or delay him getting help, but it messed her up worse. Got put on leave and no one in the department could talk to her.
Got PTSD from it and was in a bad place for a while. She's much better now and no longer a dispatcher.
Frowdo
37. Wanting To Be A Dad
About a year and a half ago now, I received a call from a man who said his girlfriend was on the toilet and bleeding. I asked him if she was pregnant, which she was about 3-4 months along.
I then ask to get her off the toilet, in which he does. As soon as he got her off the toilet, he saw his child in there. I proceeded to ask if the child was breathing, and he said it was.
After about a minute of me trying to walk him through some instructions, he told me the baby stopped breathing.
At this point, I provided him with CPR instructions, which he seemed to do the best he could with them.
I disconnected the phone when medics arrived on the scene and never found out the end result, but it can pretty much be assumed. My supervisor allowed me to walk that one off for a few minutes.
My heart goes out to that man for being as calm as he sounded in that situation because I have no idea how I'd react firsthand.
Dj_Baum
38. Wanting To Assist
I worked for 411.
I got fired because a girl called and begged me not to hang up on her. She could only function via a computer, and her computer was dead. All she wanted was a phone number to call HP.
It took me half an hour, and our avg call was 1.36 minutes. I had 5 different bosses from 5 floors come yell at me.
"You should have hung up on her, charged her, and then she could just keep calling," is what they told me.
Fudge that. I quit right then and there. No one is ever going to yell at my for helping another human being. No one, I don't care if you are a shareholder of it.
[deleted]
39. Tight Hands
I may not be an operator anymore. I quit being one now. I'm a handyman type, anyway. I answer the call and hear a woman gasping for air. I ask her over and over, then I hear choking and a man saying, ''YOU WITCH YOU TRIED TO CALL THE POLICE ON ME.''
A second later, I heard screaming. I informed them, and they figured out it was from New Mexico. To this day, I still wonder how they called us in NYC.
skeertusthefeertus
40. Might Be Silly
My favorite silly call was a lady who told me her 12-year-old wasn't breathing because his brother hit him in the chest. I'm providing CPR instructions, and she's screaming, "My baby! My baby!"
It's tense right up until the paramedics arrive and figure out it was a dog and not a human child.
I did CPR with her for about 3 minutes, ugh. Also, taking up a 911 line for stupid crap like that should be criminal. I love dogs as much as the next person, but no ambulance is gonna take your dog anywhere when they have 3 other emergency calls -for humans- waiting to go on.
Kossyra
41. Long Wait Is Over
My story is a very common thing many dispatchers may relate to. The guilt and the overwhelming feeling of sorrow and regret
It had been an average day. Nothing out of the ordinary. A call comes in on the emergency line.
"HE'S BEEN STABBED"
Ok, so I start reciting the script. Start going through the steps of checking for a pulse/breath while dispatching the closest ambulance. Reminding them to leave the stab wound and the knife alone.
Then dispatch got back to me, and I found out the nearest ambulance was 37 minutes away.
37 minutes for a situation that needs IMMEDIATE medical intervention.
The woman is screaming on the phone, crying. I can hear a crowd gather around the boy’s body. All screaming and crying. The ambulance didn't come on time. It was too late.
I went back home and watched the news, the story of the boy who got stabbed by a gang. Watched as the family cried at the loss of their boy. Guilt started to appear as if I should have done more or if it was my fault.
I still haven't forgotten. It has stayed with me to this day.
Awkward_Host7
42. A Good Friend
Not a 911 operator but a Coast Guard marine radio operator. The worst call I've taken was from a boater who witnessed a float plane crash into the ocean near a community not far away.
The plane was owned by a company that one of my close friends is a pilot for. It had slammed into the water at a 45-degree angle and full power. It was severely damaged on impact, ended up upside-down, and sank quickly. It was clear after a few minutes that there were no survivors.
After the initial call from a boater who saw the plane go down and was heading over to help, I was inundated with calls from other vessels and mariners. I was very busy for the next 30 minutes, and it was another hour after that before I was relieved from my position and could call my friend and find out if he was still alive.
Longest 1.5 hours of my life.
voombaloo
43. Daddy Failed To Come
Sorry, I'm not a 911 operator; however, I worked in insurance claims for two years. One of the worst calls I ever had was of a gentleman who was driving and lost control of his truck.
He wasn't wearing a seat belt and was thrown from the vehicle, decapitated, and rolled over. The insurance agent reporting the claim was bawling; they lived in a small town where everyone knew everyone.
She was extremely distraught because she had known the driver for his entire life. All she could say was if only he'd been wearing his seat belt. Apparently, he was on his way to pick up his four-year-old daughter from school.... in the confusion, no one picked her up for hours.
I can't imagine being the one who had to explain to her why Daddy never showed up to pick her up from school.
Emy1516
44. Hard Job
Don't work there anymore, but I worked nights in operator services for 10 months at BT (I was the British Telecom employee who asked which service you needed and passed your details through to the local service). We were a 24-hour center that took calls from all over the UK, including Ireland.
A few springs to mind, chiefly the one call I was 100% sure someone had died when a mother called having found her daughter dead in her bed surrounded by pills. The rules say you have to remain on the line in cases of extreme distress or in the case of very young or old callers.
In case the caller is unable to articulate and the other operator needs help/details from our system, I had to sit and listen to the fruitless efforts of a distraught woman desperately trying to resurrect a body that had been cold and dead for probably hours.
Different but equally sad was the old woman who called wanting the police saying she had been kidnapped and was being held in a strange place against her will.
The number came back to a nursing home and a nurse soon came on the line apologizing, saying she has dementia and keeps forgetting she had moved out of her house years ago.
I still had to call the police on her behalf just in case, though, since if the caller actually asks for the police you are legally obligated to connect them or pass whatever details you have on to the police anyway.
Finally and possibly worst, an awful Christmas Eve where either there was some catastrophic technical fault or they badly messed up the staffing levels that year in that part of London.
But calls were just going totally unanswered by the emergency services in part of the city, the longest I had someone on was 45 minutes to get through to the ambulance dispatch.
The standard procedure was to cycle through 3 different numbers for that service and neighboring ones who could respond and then, inform the supervisor who calls an escalation line to get the call answered.
I shudder to think how many people suffered from lack of access to vital emergency aid that night.
Slanderous
45. The Call
Before the story, I'll start by saying that I was surprised that the movie "The Call" didn't COMPLETELY bastardize our jobs. Much of it was actually pretty accurate to what a dispatcher/call-taker deals with, except for when she goes all rogue and hunts the guy down herself.
Anyway...
Mine wasn't so much the phone call as much as it was the result. I can't go into details at this time but it was basically a woman that asked for police, fire, everything we had.
She needed help and feared for her life.
No further information was given. Upon arrival, she had a gun pointed at my officers.
She was killed.
Ackbar652