By KEN CARPENTER
Great Bend Post
If you have an old cell phone you haven’t been using for a while, you might be surprised to learn that it can still call 911 even though it has been deactivated by your cell phone company.
During the last few years, many people have been ditching their landline telephones and are now getting phone service only with their cell phones.
Great Bend firefighter Garrett Tindall explained how to use a deactivated cell phone to reach 911 in an emergency.
"On smartphones or iPhones, there’s an emergency button on the home screen,” Tindall said. “If you hit that, it will ask if you’re sure you want to dial 911. You swipe yes, it’ll start calling. A flip phone that you might have sitting in the drawer, as long as it’s charged up, if you dial 911 and hit the call button, it’ll go out even if it doesn’t have a service on it.”
The emergency feature on your old phones can be a lifesaver, but parents should be reminded that if children are allowed to play with deactivated cell phones, they may inadvertently contact 911. That can obviously create problems for 911 operators and first responders.
Last week, Tindall and other firefighters in Great Bend visited the elementary schools in town to share fire safety and emergency services information with 1,540 kindergarten through sixth-grade students for Fire Prevention Week.