911 Calls Not Clear

Big problems for some cell phone users in several Georgia counties who have an emergency. Whitfield County 911 dispatchers and callers are only hearing heavy static on some cell phone calls. The Director of the 911 center there says the problem started early Sunday morning.

That's when people calling 911 on Verizon, At&T, and Sprint cell phones were getting a bad connection with the dispatchers as they reported emergencies. In just a few hours the AT&T phones began working correctly, but still on Monday, if you use a Verizon or Sprint cell phone to call 911, expect to have to hang up.

Elizabeth Duncan can't believe that right now her Verizon cell phone cannot clearly connect to help in an emergency. "That concerns me because I have a small child at home and I would like to be able to call 911, if I needed to."

But ever since sunday, when people call into Whitfield County's 911 on a sprint or verizon cell, the caller and dispatcher can't communicate.

Director Jeffrey Putnam says the workers here have never had this problem before. "There was a lot of background noise, a lot of static, mechanical noise on both ends of the call, so much so that they couldn't understand each other."

Now both phone companies are running tests to try to solve the problem, while getting the message out to residents.

Putnam says if you do live in the area and have an emergency and have either a Verizon or a Sprint cell phone, and need to call 911 and can't hear the dispatcher on the line, just hang up, and they'll call you right back.

He says, "They get your phone number and they know the location where you are calling from and they can hang up and call you back."

But Duncan says in an emergency that delay might cause even more damage. "You might not be able to answer the phone if they call you back if it's an emergency, which it would be if you call 911."

Putnam says, so far, the issue hasn't happened, but it is frustrating dispatchers and making their job much harder. "We can hear a lot from the tone of their voice and kind of hear the background noise and with this noise on the phone lines they are unable to do that."

He says the best option now is to call 911 from a landline until the communication line is clear again. He says it's their top priority and Duncan agrees, "Top priority I think, because a lot of people like me don't have landlines, so I only have a cell phone."

Putnam says the do get a few hundred calls a day, and he says about thirty to forty percent of those calls are from cell phones. He says the only time dispatchers can't call you right back is if you have a 911 only cell phone. State officials with the Georgia Emergency Management Agency are helping get to the bottom of the problem in all three counties affected, Murray, Whitfield, and Gordon.