The stormy weather had 911 dispatchers receiving a high number of 911 hangup calls.
I bet you didn’t know that stormy weather causes 911 hangup calls. Neither did I until I started listening to the scanner.
[selfie]
from 911dispatch.com
Every time it rains, the telephone lines go noisy, usually because of water getting inside the lines because of bad insulation (squirrels love to gnaw on the stuff). The water creates an electrical pathway between the wires in the phone line–not quite a short circuit, but enough to create noise and the generation of signals that fool the central office computer into thinking a telephone has dialed 9-1-1.
Consumer telephones aren’t know for their durability, and it’s possible that the pushbuttons or their switches will become sticky, clogged or otherwise flaky. If the switch for the “1” key is not working correctly, it could generate twotransmissions of the digit instead of one, thereby generating a 911 call under certain circumstances.
So if the police show up asking if you called 911 you now know why. Just one more reason not to have a land line.
