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When You Dial 911 and Wall Street Answers

nytimes.com

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Re: When You Dial 911 and Wall Street Answers

#91

Post by thedufer »

JshWright wrote: post #86
jzwinck wrote: post #16

In the US a lot of us grew up with the idea that when something really bad was happening you would dial 911 and people would appear very soon to help you. I don't know whether this myth was ever true, but it certainly is not true today. I have called 911 or its equivalent more than a dozen times on three continents. No magic helping people appear within five minutes. Or ten. Usually not twenty either. Sometimes not a…

> But if you call 911 in Manhattan and tell them you are on 4th Street they will ask you if it's East or West 4th. Why is that an unreasonable question? People calling in emergencies are generally stressed and often very bad at accurately communicating where they are. A few clarifying questions, even if they don't make sense to you, can go a long way towards verifying the information they're being given.

That part is reasonable. The nonsense part is

> They will even ask you this if you say you're on 3rd Avenue

"4th street and 3rd ave" is a unique identifier. The East/West part is only relevant if you give the street + a house number, with no cross-street.

Re: When You Dial 911 and Wall Street Answers

#92

Post by bluejekyll »

mysterypie wrote: post #75
CPLX wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't sound right. I don't know as much about other cities but if you call 911 in Manhattan you're going to be connected to a call center at Metrotech in Brooklyn, a few blocks from where I am typing this, where a real live human who is almost certainly from NYC and lives here will answer your call, determine the precinct and sector and get the job to dispatch. If someone is asking clarifying details it's like…

> Your story about calling 911 in NYC and getting an out of town call center is obvious fiction You sound very sure of yourself, but telephony is pretty damn complex and there are lots of strange things that happen in telephone call routing. Maybe if that guy has a cell number from another city or a foreign country, or with a certain carrier that doesn't comply with all the requirements of E911, or there are obscure…

In San Francisco, if you dial 911 on a cell phone you get the CHP, not San Francisco police. Adds delay to the help getting there.

There is real number you can dial instead, which I've stored in my phone and allows me to dial the SF 911 center directly.

Luckily I haven't needed it for more than a brush fire. This might be true in other states as well.

Re: When You Dial 911 and Wall Street Answers

#93

Post by winstonewert »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #55
winstonewert wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that bad? If it costs the insurance company more to stop the fire then to replace my house, the rational action to take is to let the house burn.

Is it bad for the company that you are paying specifically to protect your house from fire to decide that they'd rather let your every mortal possession burn to ash and then cut you a check? I want to be clear. Is this actually the question you're asking?

If you are paying the company to protect your house from fire, obviously they should actually protect your house. Hopefully, they would offer an SLA for how quickly they'll get to your house, the quality of service, etc.

But in the case postulated above, you aren't paying the company to protect your house from fire. You are paying the company as an insurance company. Fire protection is just something they do in order to reduce their losses.

Also, it is not likely they would simply decide not to protect your house. It is more likely they would have fewer fire stations, older equipment, etc that puts your house at a higher risk then you prefer.

But my point really was: regardless of who does it, some houses will end burning because it was too expensive to save them.

Re: When You Dial 911 and Wall Street Answers

#94

Post by damon_c »

thedufer wrote: post #91
JshWright wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But if you call 911 in Manhattan and tell them you are on 4th Street they will ask you if it's East or West 4th. Why is that an unreasonable question? People calling in emergencies are generally stressed and often very bad at accurately communicating where they are. A few clarifying questions, even if they don't make sense to you, can go a long way towards verifying the information they're being given.

That part is reasonable. The nonsense part is > They will even ask you this if you say you're on 3rd Avenue "4th street and 3rd ave" is a unique identifier. The East/West part is only relevant if you give the street + a house number, with no cross-street.

Also, everyone knows that 3rd ave ends at 6th street so there is no such thing as 4 street and 3rd ave.

I'm not sure if the op used it as an example for this reason or am I being overly pedantic but... there it is.

Re: When You Dial 911 and Wall Street Answers

#95

Post by JshWright »

CPLX wrote: post #71
jzwinck wrote: post #16

In the US a lot of us grew up with the idea that when something really bad was happening you would dial 911 and people would appear very soon to help you. I don't know whether this myth was ever true, but it certainly is not true today. I have called 911 or its equivalent more than a dozen times on three continents. No magic helping people appear within five minutes. Or ten. Usually not twenty either. Sometimes not a…

This doesn't sound right. I don't know as much about other cities but if you call 911 in Manhattan you're going to be connected to a call center at Metrotech in Brooklyn, a few blocks from where I am typing this, where a real live human who is almost certainly from NYC and lives here will answer your call, determine the precinct and sector and get the job to dispatch. If someone is asking clarifying details it's like…

> If someone is asking clarifying details it's likely because they are trained to do so, as people in real life emergencies tend to get flustered and make mistakes.

As an anecdote, I was once dispatched to an unconscious elderly female with a head injury after a 10' fall. This is obviously a fairly serious, time critical situation.

We arrived at the dispatched address, and found a man who was seriously confused as to why an ambulance crew was pounding on his door.

Turns out, the call was actually on the opposite end of our response area. The woman had been found on the ground by a delivery driver, and in his excitement, he pulled out his clipboard and mistakenly read the address of his last delivery.

Obviously the call taker would have no way of knowing that, and accurately dispatched us to the address that was reported. It just goes to show how easy it is for someone calling 911 to make a mistake, and how critical it is for call takers to do as much as they can to verify the location of the incident.

Re: When You Dial 911 and Wall Street Answers

#96

Post by jschwartzi »

jimmaswell wrote: post #42
gozur88 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on where you live. In some areas you pay for something akin to fire insurance - a yearly fee that covers fire service. You don't have to pay, but the fire department isn't under any obligation to help you if you don't. And if you engage their services on an as-needed basis it's going to be very expensive.

Someone shouldn't be able to opt out of fire insurance - a fire can start more fires and have other repercuasions beyond the owner's property

In that case it's called a property tax.

Re: When You Dial 911 and Wall Street Answers

#97

Post by JshWright »

damon_c wrote: post #94
thedufer wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That part is reasonable. The nonsense part is > They will even ask you this if you say you're on 3rd Avenue "4th street and 3rd ave" is a unique identifier. The East/West part is only relevant if you give the street + a house number, with no cross-street.

Also, everyone knows that 3rd ave ends at 6th street so there is no such thing as 4 street and 3rd ave. I'm not sure if the op used it as an example for this reason or am I being overly pedantic but... there it is.

And maybe the caller is actually in Brooklyn, on 3rd Ave, standing next to the 4th St Basin, and that's what they mean by "4th St" (because they are from out of town, and saw that on a sign).

Remember that not everyone who calls 911 in New York City is a local. In fact, given the tourism in the city, I suspect a large fraction of 911 calls are from non-locals (a local is gonna walk right past a drunk sleeping on a bench... a visitor might call it in as a "person down").

Verifying the location of an emergency is literally step 0 in dealing with it. Spending 10 seconds asking some "dumb" questions to rule out confusions that have come up in the past can save a significant amount of time overall.

Re: When You Dial 911 and Wall Street Answers

#98

Post by jschwartzi »

arcticbull wrote: post #26
stevendhansen wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only alternatives to privatization I can see are: 1) force the population to collectively pay for these services or 2) force specific individuals to provide these services for free Option 1 is morally questionable and option 2 is a type of slavery, so it seems privatization isnt quite as bad as the alternatives. At least with a privatized service those who wish to opt out, can.

Remind me, how is the collection of taxes to pay for services in the public interest 'morally questionable'? The fire department in particular is such an obvious case because a fire affecting one property can easily spread to the next -- and so on. Is that something you want to happen because the property owner of the first house couldn't afford the fire department? That's morally questionable.

Moreover, given a choice, a lot of people wouldn't pay ahead of time for a private fire service, leading to the kind of bankruptcy situations the article is describing. Some localities solve this problem by levying a property tax and using it to maintain public emergency services, so that anyone who would benefit from their presence in a catastrophe has already paid for the service.

This whole article just discusses the consequences of not wanting to pay taxes on anything. It perfectly described a libertarian paradise of private, for-hire, emergency services.

Re: When You Dial 911 and Wall Street Answers

#99

Post by macNchz »

jzwinck wrote: post #16

In the US a lot of us grew up with the idea that when something really bad was happening you would dial 911 and people would appear very soon to help you. I don't know whether this myth was ever true, but it certainly is not true today. I have called 911 or its equivalent more than a dozen times on three continents. No magic helping people appear within five minutes. Or ten. Usually not twenty either. Sometimes not a…

As a counter anecdote, I lived in a bit of a rough neighborhood in Brooklyn for a while and called 911 several times for things happening on the street in front of my apartment building. Each time the dispatcher asked a couple of straightforward clarifying questions and the police/fire/ems showed up in minutes. I was extremely impressed and felt good about paying taxes for a well-functioning system.

Re: When You Dial 911 and Wall Street Answers

#100

Post by jsprogrammer »

winstonewert wrote: post #47
gozur88 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is bad, for two reasons. One, firemen do more than just put out fires. If there's nobody around to put out your burning house, there's nobody around to pull you out if you've been overcome by smoke inhalation. Two, people tend to accumulate objects of sentimental value. Your great grandfather's watch ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFtHjV4c4uw ) might be priceless to you and only worth $50 to an insuranc…

Good points. Both are actually, in some sense, the same thing. Both are costs which you will pay instead of your insurance company. Because they don't pay those costs, their assesments of the costs of a fire will be off. Thus they will let some houses burn which optimally, would not burn. However, my underlying point was really that it does make rational sense to allow some houses to burn. We could put a fireman on e…

Firemen get trucks with sirens and lights. There is no need to locate one on every street.

Where are you getting your definition of rational? Are you saying you can assign a fair, total ordering of value to every thing?

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