Disaster Tip of the Week: Teach Your Kids How and When to Call 911

This weeks tip is not so much related to large scale disasters but more about home safety. Being a former 9-1-1 worker I know how important it is to teach your kids about calling 9-1-1.

We've all heard the stories in the news about a young boy or girl who dials 9-1-1 and saves the life of their parent. Unfortunately most of us think something like this will never happen to us, until it does.

The most important part of this is teaching your kids to call nine-one-one rather than nine-eleven, and teach them when they should call.

Here are some important tips when calling nine-one-one:

• Teach them to call from a house phone (land-line) not a cell phone, unless there is no house phone available.
• Teach them that once they call not to hang up
• Make sure the child knows how to give their name, address, and if possible their phone number.
• Teach them when they might need to call nine-one-one (especially if someone has health issues)
• Teach them they can get police, fire and or an ambulance when they call

If possible have your child practice by unplugging the phone and having the child dial the numbers and the parent acting as the 9-1-1 call operator.

You can also visit this kidshealth.org on How to Use 911

Kern County 911 Emergency Communications Center, Still Under Fire

A follow up investigation finds that the Kern County Emergency Communication Center responsible for answering calls to the County 911 system is still falling short of federal guidelines.

The County answers about 1,400 calls per day but during the investigation it was found that 581 calls took one to two minutes to be answered far longer than the 10 seconds required under federal guidelines.

While the County is taking steps to address the staffing issue they attribute to the problem, it looks as if the County Sheriffs Department may not even recognize that a problem exists.

Consider these statements made buy RoseMary Wahl, the Sheriff's Office Chief Deputy:

"Those are federal guidelines. We're not breaking any laws or anything by not getting to them in 10 seconds though we do strive for those."

"We're doing a good job. We're not getting a lot of complaints so that tells me we're responding to the communities needs."

However the grand jury committee doesn't feel the same. It said the Communication Center has "A perceived unwillingness to improve" its problems which could "affect officer and public safety."