Part-Time GeniusWill and Mango are determined to figure out the origin of the emergency hotline. From the strange reason people used to call up funeral home directors after an accident, to the incredible train robbery that was stopped using a makeshift phone, to the heartbreaking ways that emergency operators learn to cope on the job, this week we're dialing up a whole host of 911 facts.
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You're listening to Part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio. Guess what?
Well, what's that Mango?
So? I was giving this old piece in Popular Mechanics this week, and this one line caught my eye. Did you know that the vehicle from Ghostbusters, the original ectomobile, is actually a hearse?
You know? One thing I feel like I do know is we've talked a lot about Ghostbusters on this show recently.
Have you noticed that I have?
Anyway? I guess I didn't really think about it, but that does make sense. It's got such a weird shape to the car.
Yeah, the director sort of souped it up. And apparently the original design for the Ghostbuster's car was black with purple streaks across the doors, and then they painted out white and added some other modifications. But the thing that's interesting to me is that the car isn't just a hearse. The model's actually called a combination car. Because hearses from the nineteen fifties weren't just hearses. They also worked as ambulances. According to Popular Mechanics quote, hearses from funeral homes pulled double duty, and the funeral home employees didn't have much in the way of instruction beyond drive fast because the EMPT as a concept was still a few years off.
So why didn't people just call nine one one? And we're talking about the nineteen fifties, right.
I guess nine only one wasn't a national thing yet, and ambulances and EMPT services hadn't really been formalized either. That really starts in the mid to late sixties. So the funeral homes already have these cars that can carry people laying down. Funeral directors are just up at all hours, and for them it's the way to make extra money. Plus, from a more cynical perspective, if a patient doesn't make it, you've gotten an easy referral. According to the Journal, this paper from Ontario, Canada quote these ambulances not only took the injury to the hospital, they transported patients to and from nursing homes and even gave newborn babies and their mothers a lift home. The equipment was often sparse, a stretcher, a blanket, a first aid kit, and of course, in earlier iteration, it points out they'd have a bottle of whiskey to numb the pain. I mean, I can't imagine, and I don't want to think about this sort of thing, but like, imagine your granddad falling down some stairs or something like that.
The idea of calling a funeral home to help with this problem just feels so morbid.
You know, I know which God is wondering when did emergency hotlines and nine on one change all of that? So that's what we're talking about this episode. Let's dive in.
Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome back to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as always I'm joining with my good friend Mango, and sitting somewhere behind that big booth is our pal Dylan. He's got a bottle of Emergency nine sauce and see SEMs to be pouring it on everything he's eating back once he got back. If I were doing that, I would be sweating. He's I don't see one drout of sweat on the guy, but he's got I mean, it looks like he's got a burrito.
A hot dog.
I think that's a cobb salad bart. Mango, I spot a banana, but what are you doing?
I'm so glad he also has a big jug of milk back there to calm it all down, or else we'd have to call nine one one. But speaking of nine one one, which translates his emergency to us these days, why don't you give us a rundown on how that number came to be.
Well, as you said at the top of the show, here, nine one one is a relatively modern thing nationally ethic. That was the thing that surprised me most as we started looking into it. But it actually wasn't until nineteen sixty seven that the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice recommended that quote, a single number should be established, and this would be nationwide. It would be for reporting any emergency situation.
So what happened before that, I mean other than calling up, like you know, your local funeral director with right, everyone obviously has on speed dial.
That's exactly right.
Well, there used to be different numbers for different kinds of emergencies, and we will get to that. But back in nineteen sixty seven, the FCC met with the American Telephone and Telegraph Company we know them today as AT and T. Actually, that was another thing I learned. I didn't know that that's what that had stood for. But to find a means of establishing a universal emergency number that could be implemented super quickly. So in nineteen sixty eight, AT and T announced that it would establish the digits nine to one one as the emergency code throughout the United States. But weirdly, it wasn't until the Public Safety Act of nineteen ninety nine MANGO nineteen ninety nine. We were in college at the time that nine to one one was officially established as the nation's emergency calling number.
That is insane that it took that long.
Yeah, it was actually Bill Clinton who signed the law ensuring that the FCC controlled nine one one and that it had a budget to oversee the number, which is when it became officially the law of the land.
But people were calling nine one one for decades before that, right.
Yeah, So the first nine one one call actually took place in my home state in Haleyville, Alabama. And this was in nineteen sixty eight, and it's still celebrated today. And do I mean celebrating, you know, have all sorts of weird things. You know, We've got that the big statue to the Bowl weavil and enterprise out and we love celebrating our super weird things there. But there's a sign there that says Haileyville where nine one one began, which is such a weird thing. But there are also banners hanging from street lights that have the town seal on it that you know, shows this red phone receiver and the words home of nine one one. Again, it just feels like a really weird message to send. But also, there's literally a nine one one festival in Haleyville every June, So I don't know if you've booked your tickets yet.
I haven't.
I mean, I'm not sure that the Home of nine one one is really that big a draw for me, and it feels weird to want to go to somewhere where they have so many emergencies. But I am curious about this festival. How do you celebrate a phone number?
Well, if you think about it, there are some things to celebrate, Like really, it's a festival to celebrate first responders, so that's pretty great. They obviously work super hard save a lot of lives. There's a parade, some first responder awards. Also, you know, given where it is, there's a tractor show, so that's the fun part too. And then obviously there's got to be a cornhole tournament to sort of round things out.
You know, that sounds perfect, but the history.
Is pretty interesting. So back in the nineteen sixties, there were all these regional telephone companies. So when AT and T and the FCC decided that three numbers to use would be nine to one pint one, the president of the Alabama Telephone Company, his name was Bob Gallagher, read about the decision and was upset that independent carriers were left out of the conversation. So he basically rushed to establish a nine to one to one system as fast as possible. He wanted to beat AT and T to the punch, and it took less than a week to set up, and on February sixteenth, nineteen sixty eight, the red emergency phone in Haleyville rang for the first time.
I love that there's actually like a red phone there. It's amazing.
It's literally on the town seal and all those banners, and it's also it's weird to me, like, before looking into all of this, I actually did not know that this all started in my home state.
That's wonderful. Well, what number would you call if you had an emergency? Like one year before that, in nineteen sixty six.
Well up until that point, people would just dial zero and then they would tell the operators. Sometimes we forget about that, right, the existence of operators, And you can imagine this was a pretty stressful situation. So the telephone company operators weren't necessarily trained on these emergency services. But phone lines had been the go to for reporting emergencies since the early nineteen hundred, So way back, the founders of the communications giant Ericson actually developed a portable phone handset and this crank that could be hooked to these like bare phone wires, and you'd actually place these two metal hooks inside it over these telephone wires to form the connection and then crank the handbox to create a signal that would hopefully be answered by someone on the line. This seems like a lot to figure out in these emergency situations.
It's insane. So like if there was like a hot air balloon crash, or a guy with a handlebar mustache riding too fast in his unicycle, this is the contraction you'd have to use.
That's exactly, and those were two of the most common injuries and emergencies. But it turns out people use the crank and hook thing for some pretty important things, Like way back in nineteen oh seven, somebody used one to report a train robbery and it actually contributed to the arrest of the outlaws.
That's incredible.
And here's actually, it's just so fun to read about some of these old ones. Here's one more old time nuggeting. Part of the reason we actually have some early emergency regulations is because of the Titanic. So basically, when people on the ship realized that were in trouble, the Titanic radio operator signaled for help. And it turns out there was one ship close by that was capable of offering aid, but the operator was off duty and the signal was never actually received, which is obviously a tragic situation. So in response, Congress passed the Radio Act of nineteen twelve, requiring all seagoing vessels to have a licensed radio operator on duty at all times. And this was to continuously monitor these distress frequencies. And that's what kickstarted the relationship between emergency communications and governance.
It's interesting that that's one of the legacies of the Titanic. You know, I never would have guessed that, but I guess it kind of makes sense that it takes a big tragedy to spur some big change like that. Like in the UK, instead of nine one one, they have nine to ninety nine. And it's actually the world's oldest emergency phone service. It dates back to nineteen thirty five. But again it comes about because of a tragedy. There was a deadly fire in London in on Wimpole Street and five women ended up dying. The neighbors did try to help. They all dialed zero for the switchboard, but it was jammed with so many calls that they couldn't alert anyone of the fire.
And so I'm curious, So how did they settle on those numbers nine to nine to nine.
The General Post Office, which ran the telephone network, proposed a three digit number that could trigger a special signal and a flashing light at the exchange and then the operators could divert their attention and you know, get these priority calls. But they just had to pick three numbers. People thought an end number was a good choice, so you know, you could find it easily if you're reaching for your phone in the dark or in thick smoke. So like one one one was rejected because it could be triggered by faulty equipment or rubbing telephone lines together. I guess two two two was already taken apparently connected to the abbey, and zero zero zero didn't make any sense because the first zero would already take you straight to the operator. So they went with nine nine to nine, and on June thirtieth, nineteen thirty seven, the Capitol's new emergency telephone line was unveiled, and a week later, on July seventh, nineteen thirty seven, the press reported at the first arrest after a nine nine nine call, there was a guy, John Stanley Beard. He was woken up in the early hours of the morning by a noise underneath his bedroom window, and when he looked outside, he saw a single foot, a man's foot out there, and so his wife down nine nine nine. In less than five minutes, this burglar was arrested five minutes.
That's actually pretty amazing given everything. But so nine nine nine pretty much worked immediately.
Uh, well, it didn't work perfectly. Of the about one thousand, three hundred calls made that first week, ninety one were prank calls.
Oh gosh, I mean, it feels so stupid but also so human that as soon as the country gets this emergency number, people would of course start making crank calls.
Yeah, especially after this very sober notice in the evening News advised the public how to use nine nine to nine. It reads, quote only dial nine ninety nine if the matter is urgent. If, for instance, the man in the flat next to yours is murdering his wife, or you have seen a heavily masked cat burglar peering around the stackpipe of the local bank building. If you've merely lost a little towser or Lori has come to rest in your front garden, just call up the local police end quotes, right. I love the idea that someone putting their truck a little too close to you, know, your azaleas is something you should call nine one one about.
I'm pretty sure I told you this before. But my grandmother, of course, Mamma, she would if we'd end up in a traffic jam. Every once in a while, she would want to pick up the phone and call nine one one, and we'd have to stop her from doing that, just to find out why there was a traffic jam. But I mean, I guess they were just worried that the emergency number would turn into this sort of like a complaint line for cranky citizens.
Yeah, I mean, I guess that's fair. The other thing about the line of that time is that the early technology wasn't perfect, so when a call came in, operators were alerted by this like big flashing red light and a claxon, which is one of those like a wuga sirens. So if you can imagine multiple calls coming in at once, it's kind of nuts. A nineteen fifty one article in the Post Office Telecommunications Journal described nine nine nine's early days. Quote, when the raucous buzzer sounded in the quiet discipline switch rooms, a few of the girls found the situation too much for them and had to be carried out.
That sounds pretty awful, actually, but actually there are a whole bunch of awugas and flashing lights going on over there. I don't know if our listeners can hear that, which I think Dylan is using to tell us it is time to throw to commercials. So stay right there. We'll be back with more Part Time Genius after the break. Welcome back to Part Time Genius, where we're talking nine to one to one and the various emergency lines around the world. All right, megol let's jump over to Europe and look at their emergency number, one one one two. How did that come into existence?
So the idea for one one two started in the early nineteen nineties. In July nineteen ninety one, the EU decided that all member states would introduce a common emergency number, but it wasn't until two thousand and two that one one two became mandatory for all EU member states, And the number does work in some other places, like Australia uses a triple zero for their emergency number, although you can also use one one two if you're calling from a mobile phone.
Actually, that was one of the things I thought was most interesting in the research of all of this, Like if you're abroad and you dial your home country's emergency number, often it'll just forward to whatever country you're in. Like, if you dial one one two here in the States, it fords to nine one one.
Yeah. I actually remember when I was on study abroad, this kid on my trip was feeling sick from something he'd eaten, and he was like super super dramatic and he was like crawling on the floor to the phone and trying to dial nine one one. But you know it's a landline and then it doesn't go anywhere, So, you know, it did make me think, like, I don't know what you're supposed to do in emergency situations in other countries, but I guess on cell phones have kind of solved for that. Yeah, which is a great thing.
It is definitely a good thing. And today we have what's called Enhance nine one one, which is what ninety three percent of counties with nine to one one coverage have, So basically nine one one systems have been upgraded to accommodate for wireless calls and they share the caller's location by iding the closest cell tower to the caller. I'm sure you've heard about this as well.
Yeah, I feel like you hear a lot about that on like NCIS type shows, or like in Cereal where they're trying to triangulate a caller's location from cell phone towers. But that feels like technology that's been around for a while.
That's true, but nine one one is always evolving. Like right now, dispatch operators are transitioning to what's called Next Generation nine one one or NG nine one one, which will allow us to send things like texts and pictures to our nine one providers.
Which is great, but I imagine with all the prank pictures that might come to it's probably another opportunity for emergency dispatches to remind nine one one users to use it appropriately.
Well, none of our listeners would ever do that. But here's another interesting thing that I learned in my research, and again it's an evolution because of a tragedy. But you know, if you're in an office, you often have to dial nine to reach an outside line, right yeah.
And sometimes in hotels too, right.
Yeah, exactly, And that's not the case if you're dialing nine one one. So today, if you just dial nine one one, it'll connect you. And that's because of this case. In twenty thirteen, there was a woman named Carrie Hunt. She was attacked and killed by her estranged husband in Marshall, Texas. And this happened in a hotel room, and so Carrie's nine year old daughter was in the room and trying to call nine one one on the hotel phone. I mean, just such a tragic situation. But she dialed nine one one four times during the attack, but tragically none of those calls went through.
That is so awful.
Yeah. So ever since then, Carrie's father, a man named Hank Hunt, has worked tirelessly with the FCC and Congress to change the law so that nine is no longer needed for nine one one calls from these multi line systems like hotel phones, business phones, things like that. And all these efforts paid off in twenty eighteen when Carrie's law actually became this officially adopted law across the states.
That you know that that's really sad, but also seems so obvious, right, Like, I guess we just don't think of these things until we have to.
Yeah, And because arguably the multi line phone system is a great technological advancement, but it didn't integrate naturally with the nine one one system. And it's kind of the same things with like smartphones and watches, but but really more in the opposite direction. Like they've almost made calling nine one one too easy.
Yeah. I think it's funny that every time I shut my phone off, it offers me the option to call emergency services, which you know is obviously a good thing, but sometimes it does feel like my phone wants me to call nine one one.
Yeah, I mean, like, like you said, built in nine one one features and smartphones are a net positive, but they've definitely led to an increase in the accidental nine one one calls. For instance, in India, for some reason, if you or your kid or your pocket presses the side button three times, your phone will dial one one two.
That's crazy. I go to India like every other year, and I had no idea about this.
Glad that you haven't accidentally called nine or one one two, I guess in that case. You know, in some smart watches now include fall detection, so if your watch thinks you fall in and can't get up, it will call nine one one, which is a great safety feature.
Yeah, it's so smart. It's like such a boon for people like us who might be worried about you know, your parents or your in laws.
Yeah, but you can also imagine how it might cause some problems too, Like at one Idaho ski resort this past winter, this place called Schweitz Or Mountain, the sheriff's office saw this dramatic increase in unwanted nine to one one calls and people that were skiing and snowboarding and they were just wiping out, which was triggering all this fall detection on smart watches and it just kept calling nine one one.
That's incredible. They just have to stay on the bunny hill. If you're wearing a smart.
Watch, that's right. But sometimes it doesn't even take a fall to trigger this automatic emergency call. So there's this Reddit post from a person in Europe who Samsung Galaxy dialed one one two when they took it off, and this is what it said. Quote, I took my watch off and threw it on my bed because I went to take a shower. Well, my watch interpreted that is falling. One one two called me like four times, and when I heard the fourth call, I ran out to answer the phone.
That's crazy, and I feel like running out all soapy with shampoo and your eyes might actually cause a spill that makes you need to call nine one one. But to your point, obviously, unintentional calls aren't a great thing, especially since there's a nationwide shortage of nine to one one dispatches right now.
Oh that's interesting. Why do you think there's a shortage.
So a lot of reasons, you know, burnout from the pandemic, long shifts, overnight shifts, low pay, high stress, all of that is contributing. But the volume of calls is also insane. I mean, this number is all over the place online, but supposedly America's nine to one one system receives an average of two hundred and forty million calls annually, or an average of over twelve hundred calls per minute.
Oh wow, that is insane.
Yeah, and I hadn't even processed how hard the job is. Like, I actually read this memoir. It's called Answering nine to one one by Carolyn Bourou. I think her name's pronounced, But she's talking about how people always want to hear the types of calls she answers at parties, and it just makes her pause every time because like, actually, the most interesting calls, she says, are the saddest ones. So this is what she writes. They are the stories where mothers and fathers fail their children. They are the stories where friends and lovers do awful things to each other because of drugs or alcohol or worse, for no real reason at all. Where they are the fascinating ways that some people lose their grip on reality. Interesting, yeah, but not amusing. And she talks about trying to hold it together on a call where this girl has called because her mom has tried to commit suicide, and how she has to ask like where the gun is and what type of gun she used, and if the mom is still alive, And you know, those calls just have to be devastating, and you know, as an operator you kind of have to hold it together until after the shift when when she says she would like, you know, release and cry.
It's one of those things I can't imagine. It's just it's heartbreaking.
Yeah, And the lower staffing levels across the country also increase the burden on the remaining dispatchers, which makes them more susceptible to the burnout. So it's really this vicious cycle. And also since twenty twenty, in the wake of George Floyd, there's been a perception of nine one one as an enabler of the police. So these days there's a growing interest in alternative dispatch or alternative response programs that send public health and crisis intervention workers instead of cops to intervene with certain calls. And it's interesting when you look at the numbers because of the approximately two hundred and forty million calls made to nine one one every year, only a small fraction are for serious or violent crimes. The majority are calls like disorderly conduct and noise complaints, suspicious people are cars, and mental health issues and also things like substance use and homelessness, and so you really don't always need police as first responders.
Yeah, I mean, there is this tendency to think of police as kind of like this all purpose, you know force there, but they actually are only trained in very specific ways, and like you wouldn't call the cops to put out a fire, so it feels weird that we would call them to deal with a drug overdose or something else that they're really not equipped for, not trained for.
Yeah, And alternative dispatch programs deploy public health professionals and crisis workers to situations involving mental health, substance abuse, and homelessness, so in other words, people who are specifically trained to resolve those emergencies. The Harvard Kennedy School Government Performance Lab the GPL, is working with fifteen jurisdictions across the country to develop and pilot some of these alternative responsestem right now, Yeah, all.
This it does sort of highlight how knee jerk calling nine to one one can be, like whatever the emergency might be, actually there's this funny instance from September of twenty twenty three when the US Marines actually called nine to one one to report having lost you know what they lost? They lost an F thirty five fighter jet.
It's not like you lost a cat or something.
No, it's crazy, and it's it's just wild to read about this story. But eventually they found the pilot, but somehow not the jet. So if you see an F thirty five just roaming around your neighborhood, maybe slip a note to the Pentagon, just just let them know.
Well, should we do a quick round up of funny nine one one calls from dispatchers on Reddit, because that would be a better way to do our fact off.
I think we all know this is what this episode has been building too, So let's do it all right, Why don't I start with a classic straight from red quote. Lady called in because she thought Willie Nelson was having a cardiac arresque in her trailer and she needed an ambulance. I started giving her CPR instructions, and come to find out when paramedics got there, she was doing compressions on the couch cushions. Apparently she was just really.
High tale as old as time. So I like this one quote. A concern citizen called in an animal stuck in a tree, and that animal was a bird.
Oh, just stuck. I had another fun animal call quote. Middle of the night shift, get a report of a guy trying to ride on a moose. Officer attends there is, indeed a male trying to ride said moose. Male is wearing high visibility vest and helmet, which his girlfriend made him put on for safety reasons. Of course, I like that.
That's actually a moose there in that scenario. Yeah, so this is another animal one quote. I talked to a pizza delivery guy who couldn't reach his destination because a defiant chicken was standing in the middle of the road. I stayed with him on the phone as he pleaded with it to finally move along. Truly a chicken crossing the road moment.
Yeah, I see why they would call nine one. Why that does sound sound terrifying? So yeah, all right, So I'm gonna end on this one because I really love it. It is so brazen. Here we go. Quote. Got a call from one of the managers at a bowling alley complaining that their ice machine was broken and it's a really busy night, and if someone doesn't come to fix it, there will be no cold drinks. I mean, to be fair, no cold drinks at a bowling alley is an emergency. So you know this one seems maybe legit thinking more about it, anyway, what are you gonna end on, Mango?
I mean, if you think about there will be blood that bowling alley is seeing. You know, turns dangerous when there's nothing to drink.
Say it's legit now.
I love the nine one one calls from kids who are calling to complain that their siblings being mean to them or won't share their legos. But I think my favorite one is about a kid and a mom. Uh so this is how it goes.
Quote.
A frazzled mother called because her six year old had gotten onto the roof and she couldn't get him down. She kept screaming about how we need to hurry, not because she was worried he would get hurt, but because he had done this before and the last time he peed in the air vents.
All right, Well, nothing like a little pee in the air vent to seal a fact off. It's a cheap way to win it, Mango, But I'm gonna have to give you this week's trophy. So that's it for this week's Part Time Genius. If you like the show, want us to cover any topics, or just want to say hey to Dylan or tell him to take it easy on the hot sauce, we always love hearing from you. Just look for the contacts in the show notes.
But as always, thanks so much for listening.
Part Time Genius is a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio. This show is hosted by Will Pearson and me Mongas Chatikler and research by our goodpal Mary Philip Sandy. Today's episode was engineered and produced by the wonderful Dylan Fagan with support from Tyler Klang. The show is executive produced for iHeart by Katrina Norbel and Ali Perry, with social media support from Sasha Gay, Trustee Dara Potts and Viney Shorey. For more podcasts from Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
