Long dial for help

Press, 10 February 1981, Page 17

Long dial for help

NZPA Washington In New Zealand, you dial 111 for an immediate emergency call connection to toe police, fire station or ambulance service. In Britain, it is 999. In toe United States,. it is suppostd to be 911. But in toe Virginian city of Alexandria, for instance, you have to find toe. telephone book to look up toe number, ; 549-51000, to summon toe fire brigade if your house is on fire. If you wake to find

yourself being burgled, you need to know the number, 750-6411, to alert toe police. Both are toe official emergency numbers — the only alternative to using them is to hope toe operator answers quickly when you dial 0. Fourteen years after a presidential commission recommended a uniform single telephone number for reporting emergencies, fewer than one in - three households across the

nation have access to 911. The American Telephone and Telegraph Company made. 911 available in 1968, one year after the recommendation on toe President’s commission on law enforcement and the administration of justice. But Congress refused to pass a ntonber of bills calling for its universal adoption in the early 19705, and toe Nixon Administration ruled that It should be implemented by state and local bodies,

Only 12 of toe 50 states have partied 911 legislation of some kind, and in - many of them it is only available to a tiny percentage of toe population. Some other states have the 911 number in widespread use without legislation thanks to action by local authorities. The biggest obstacle to uniform use of the number is apathy, according to an official report in 1979. It said toe citizen was generally not intersted in the scheme until he or someone in his family became a victim of crime, or needed a fire engine or ambulance in a hurry.