Wichita 911 rocked by calls after Oklahoma quake

WICHITA, KS — Dispatchers are reminding residents to only call 911 if they have a real emergency after the center was rocked by phone calls after the Oklahoma earthquake Saturday night.

“We were overwhelmed with telephone calls,” said Randy Bargdill, Sedgwick County Emergency Communications Director.

Bargdill says dispatchers received nearly 300 phone calls 30 minutes after tremors from a 5.6 magnitude earthquake hit Oklahoma.  None of the calls requested help.  Most were asking questions about the earthquake or passing along to dispatchers where the tremors were felt.

“I would suggest the best thing to do would be to turn on your television sets and get the blow by blow from the media because it’s certainly news worthy, but its not emergency worthy,” said Bargdill.

With the system flooded, some callers to 911 had to wait on hold in line.

Last month, 911 announced they’ll soon launch a new system for use during high volume call times that gives dispatchers the ability to send non-emergency callers to another line with tape-recorded information.

Bargdill says all the dispatchers have yet to be trained on when to use the new “dump button”.  It wasn’t available Saturday night, but Bargdil believes it will be ready by the end of the week.

Read the story here.

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