When should you dial 911?

In case of emergency, dial 911 so that firefighters, police, or an ambulance can come to where you are. Dialing 911 is free, even from a public phone. Anyone in Quebec can dial 911.

During this call, the operator will ask you several questions, including:

• The location of the event
• The nature of the emergency
• The location from which you are calling

All the information you provide will help determine if the situation requires multiple emergency responders and which ones.

When to dial 911

Here are examples of situations requiring communication with emergency services:

• Fire
• Theft
• Accident
• Gas leak
• Armed person
• Cardiac arrest

Who to call when it is not an emergency?

In non-urgent situations, you can still contact police and fire services. To do so, contact the neighborhood police station or the fire station serving the area directly. (URL to pages)

When not to dial 911

If the situation is not urgent, do not dial 911. The 911 service staff must be ready to respond to urgent calls.

If you call 911 by mistake, do not hang up. Simply tell the person who answers that the call is a mistake.

If you hang up, someone will call you back. If you are unreachable, emergency services may come to where you are. Staying on the line prevents resources from being dispatched where they are not needed.

Calling from a cellular device

When you dial 911 from a cell phone, the coordinates that appear on the screen of the operator who answers you are very different from those that appear when you dial 911 from your landline phone.

Indeed, landline telephony allows 911 service operators to access the caller's coordinates (address and phone number).

When it is a cell phone, the data that appears on the operator's screen consists of geographic data (longitude and latitude) indicating where the caller is, within a radius ranging from 10 to 1200 meters with global positioning technology (GPS), triangulation technology, or signal strength measurement. Additional questions may be asked.

Teaching children about the 911 emergency service

Teach your children when, why, and how to dial 911. Education plays a major role during an emergency situation.

Make sure your children know their address and phone number. Post them near the phone so they can read them in case of emergency.

You can invent emergency scenarios and role-play using a fake phone or a toy phone.

Never give a child an old deactivated cell phone to use as a toy. Even if it is deactivated, the 911 emergency service remains operational.

Examples of questions to discuss with your children

What is 911?

It is a special phone number to dial in an emergency to call the police, firefighters, or ambulance.

911 should only be dialed in case of emergency. Examples: an accident, a theft, an injured person, a fire, etc.

What should I say?

When dialing 911, someone will ask you to describe the emergency situation. You should:

• stay calm
• speak slowly and clearly
• describe the emergency in detail
• give your name, address, and phone number
• not hang up before the person on the other end has finished

Additional sources