PENNSYLVANIA, USA — The Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency (PEMA) announced on Sept. 5 that a Text-to-911 service is now available to all counties in the state.
The service is meant to benefit those with speech or hearing impairments, someone who is having a medical emergency and renders them speaking and instances where making noise could endanger a caller.
To send a message to 911, an individual would type "911" into the recipient field, describe the location of the incident including the address and municipality, describe the situation and press send.
The service does have limitations including requiring a data plan, the conversation can't include more than one person, no abbreviations or emojis and 911 call takers will not automatically know where the text is coming from. The operator will not be able to hear any background noise that could help the subject's case.
Text messages to 911 also can take longer to receive, could get out of order or may not be received at all.
