I'm watching Dateline, a story beginning with a 911 call....

The dispatcher asks the caller (husband): "What city is your emergency in?"


WTF ?!

DOESN'T UTAH HAVE Enhanced 911?

Enhanced 911 tells the dispatcher the address that calls come from, including cell calls.

A cell phone may or may not provide that data. It depends on the phone and the network. It is more common with landlines, of course.

In Massachusetts, the State Police handle all 911 calls from cell phones, and they have to ask where my situation is. A few tips:

1) Give as precise an address as you can, including municipality. For example, "There's a fight between three men at the rear of the warehouse on 1567 North 2300 West, South Overshoe. One has a knife."

2) Your municipality may have direct 911 to its own call taker or dispatcher. For example, in Boston, you dial 617-343-4911. "343" is all Boston PD phone numbers, and "4911" (get it?) is "for the 911 call taker." The State Police link is thus eliminated.

Utah is not necessarily backwards technologically.

You may have enhanced 911, but you don't have Fry Sauce, so suck it!

Down with fry sauce. 911? Who cares?

911 operators do that where I live too. They work out of a call center, and have to reroute the emergency calls where they need to go. What may be able to be done electronically still cannot duplicate the human function.

Nor is Caller ID always indicative of where someone is calling from.

I worked for a company's office in Utah. All the calls were routed touch their main switch at the corporate offices in another state. If we called 911, it would go to the 911 service in another city and give the address of the corporate offices in the other state.

We were instructed to use our cell phones rather than the office phones.

The point is. the address provided is not always accurate. To assume it is correct would be very bad if the address was not accurate.

I, for one, am glad that they verify the address.