Text-to-911 Turns Three

Picture it: You’re caught up in an emergency, but you can’t talk on the phone. So you use Text-to-911. Hoping to give as much detail as possible about your situation, you attach a photo to your text. But that could ruin your chances of getting help. 

Right now, the Text-to-911 system is not able to accept emojis, photos, videos or graphics. So if you send an emergency text to 911 with any of those in it, you run the risk of your text getting bounced out of the system and never answered. 

Learn more in our blog.​​

How to Get the Help You Need Despite a 911 Outage

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If you had an emergency on the night of Sept. 28 and tried to call 911 for help, it’s possible you couldn’t get through for about one hour and 17 minutes. Because of a multi-state outage of the 911 system, at least 1187 calls to 64 Minnesota public safety answering points (PSAPs), or 911 dispatch centers, failed to be routed. The outage affected six other states including Arizona, Colorado, North Dakota, North Carolina, South Dakota and Utah.

Our latest blog ​tells you what we know now and gives tips for what to do if you need emergency services during a 911 outage.