By Courtney Almeida

Deactivated cell phones and 911, how to prevent accidental calls

Mar 18, 2019 | 10:42 AM

The City’s fire department is advising the community to rethink giving away old cell phones to children as toys. Phones must have their battery disconnected before being given away, as deactivated phones can still call 911 and connect to emergency services.

Every cell phone in North America is required to be able to dial 911, even if there is no plan or sim card.

“People get a new cellphone and their old cellphone gets deactivated and it sort of becomes a toy for children to play with. I suppose a lot of people don’t realize that even a deactivated cellphone still works for calling 911,” says Preben Bossen, Fire Chief for the Grande Prairie Fire Department.

A City finding shows that in 2018, Grande Prairie 911 took 65,036 calls and 12% of those were from disconnected phones, many were children playing with old phones.

Battery removal is the key, as removing the battery from your old phone will make it completely deactivated and safer for children to play with.

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“False alarms are always a problem. I don’t think it’s a huge problem for us but we’re always trying to educate where we can to reduce the calls into our 911 centre that actually do not require service,” said Bossen.

It is mandated that every 911 call is followed up on. To prevent further issues, it is advised that people be upfront with their misdials and stay on the line to explain what happened.

“Just stay on the line and simply tell the operator that it was a mistake and then we can end that call,” explains Bossen.

“What happens if we don’t find out what the issue is, the 911 operator will try to dial back to re-connect that call and find out if in fact it was an emergency, so it adds a little more work on the back end if people do hang up.”