Save a life. Wherever they are.
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Access contact information for any 911/emergency dispatch agency anywhere in the U.S., including Alaska and Hawaii. Subscribe to unlock full capabilities and save information for everywhere people you care about may be.
Someone's only hope...
from hundreds of miles away.
If you become aware of an emergency in another location, whether on a video conference with a colleague, a video chat with a parent or any other situation, use the app to find, save and directly call an emergency dispatcher in a distant jurisdiction.
Plan in advance for those you care about.
Create contacts for the agencies serving your friends, family and colleagues. Access data for all 5,000+ emergency dispatch agencies in the U.S. and receive automatic updates for your contacts in the app if the database changes.
Save precious time in an emergency.
Directly call the right emergency dispatcher from the app.
Dialing 911 connects the caller to a 911 operator for their own local area. But the 911 system is not designed to get help to a distant emergency. That 911 operator cannot simply press a button to transfer a call to any other agency.
"Their assumption was...if I called 911 here it would work."
"a horrifying situation for anybody to be in"
"something that could have been prevented with a little bit of planning and preparation"
"They gave me a phone number, a phone number to the wrong city."
"calling every municipal office up and down"
Don't let a horror story happen to you.
For a real-world example of problems reporting a distant emergency without a tool like DistantEmergency, listen. (Most important remarks start at 2:20).
"cannot begin to describe how distressing it is to know that you have a parent that has just had an immense amount of trauma and be going through phone trees and getting voicemail because you don't have phone numbers for who to get a hold of"
"It ended up being 45 minutes before I could actually talk to someone...to tell me yes, someone has been dispatched."
"a lot of these systems are not coordinated and you need to be able to directly call that local dispatcher sometimes"
DistantEmergency calls are made with your device's phone calling feature to a 10-digit phone number. In order for a DistantEmergency call to be made, your device must have cellular phone calling service.
DistantEmergency is for emergency use only when the caller and emergency location are in different 911 agency coverage areas. If in doubt, dial 911 by phone.
To report an emergency at your own location or within the same 911 agency coverage area, dial 911 by phone. If in doubt, dial 911 by phone.
DistantEmergency cannot determine the location of a distant emergency. You must provide the emergency’s exact address to the dispatcher.
If DistantEmergency does not work properly in an emergency, dial 911 by phone.
Once the call from DistantEmergency is placed, the response to the emergency is the responsibility of the applicable agencies and the outcome is subject to those agencies’ capabilities. Many agencies have a 10-digit emergency number that will be answered immediately by a dispatcher. However, other agencies do not have this same dedicated infrastructure and/or staffing, which can sometimes mean a DistantEmergency caller will have to navigate prompts (e.g. “press 1 for dispatch”) and/or experience hold times before speaking with a dispatcher. All emergency calls—direct local 911 calls or DistantEmergency app calls—face the same ever-present risk of extenuating circumstances including, but not limited to, outages and excessive call volumes.
An agency's automated prompt may instruct you to hang up and call 911 if it is an emergency. Instead, follow instructions to speak with a dispatcher, have an officer respond to your location or report a “non-emergency.” These options are the best ways to speak to a dispatcher and report an emergency from a distant location.
Agencies whose phone numbers have been assessed by DistantEmergency as not sufficiently reliable for reporting a distant emergency will not be available in the app until this assessment changes.
DistantEmergency is for emergency use only. Keymaker Cyber LLC will assist law enforcement to the fullest extent investigating and prosecuting misuse.
Usage Guidelines