TULSA, Okla. — People can now text emergencies to 911 in Green Country.
Multiple emergency agencies announced the launch of a regional text-to-911 system. People in distress can open their texting app, address their message to 911, and text operators what's happening.
"Once it's received by an agency, they'll get a response of who's answering and ask for the location, and then the conversation begins," one official said.
The text-to-911 system covers about a dozen localities across Green Country:
- Bixby
- Broken Arrow
- Collinsville
- Glenpool
- Jenks
- Owasso
- Sand Springs
- Sapulpa
- Skiatook
- Tulsa
- Osage County and Tulsa County will also receive the service
- Rogers County will receive an upgrade to its existing Text-to-911 system.
Authorities emphasized the advantages texting can have over calling.
Those include more access for the hard-of-hearing or speech-impaired, situations in which the caller is in a bad cell zone where calls might not patch through but texts might, and situations where the caller could be in danger if they speak out loud.
Although, just like calling 911, it's still illegal to make false reports.
Officials stressed there are some text-to-911 system limitations right now.
It cannot process pictures, videos, or emojis. The system also does not "support interpreting foreign languages" at this time. Area authorities said they hope to incorporate all these into the system down the line.
While a text-to-911 service has been operating in our region for a little bit now, authorities officially announced its launch on Jan. 18.
In fact, the Tulsa police chief said the system has already proved "instrumental," mentioning one situation late last year.
“That was when there was an active shooter call at one of the middle schools in the Tulsa public school system," said Chief Wendell Franklin. "I think some of the reporters picked up on it that when we talked about how we were summoned, we were actually summoned through a student texting 911 and getting us to respond to that.”
This system was years in the making, with one official remarking that the pandemic and "budget crunches" slowed them down. However, the state of Oklahoma and the 911 Authority provided a grant, and local authorities had to do the matching part of it.
This follows many other places across the United States gradually adopting text-to-911 systems.
The first place in the country to adopt such a system was Waterloo, Iowa, in August 2009, according to reports at the time.
As of December last year, 52% of 911 call centers in the U.S. provide text-to-911 services, according to tech nonprofit accesSOS.
Looking at accesSOS's map of areas that have adopted it, a major outlier is Oklahoma, where most counties lack a text-to-911 service. The few pockets providing such service in the Sooner State are largely confined to Green Country.
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