Your Biggest Day Is Your Biggest Blind Spot: Cell Phone 911 Calls on Event Days

In our last article, Nobody Opens an App in an Emergency, we looked at two gaps that campus safety apps leave behind. People in a crisis dial 911 instead of opening an app, and visitors never had the app in the first place.

This article looks more closely at the second gap. The visitor problem isn’t spread evenly across the year. It shows up all at once, on the days your campus is most crowded, most chaotic, and most visible.

Picture graduation day

It’s a Saturday morning in May. Thousands of families are walking across campus toward the arena. Grandparents are moving slowly in the heat. Parking lots are full, overflow lots are filling, and people are cutting across lawns they’ve never seen before.

Near the back of a parking garage, an older man collapses. His daughter pulls out her phone and dials 911.

She does exactly the right thing. The call goes to the county 911 center, and an ambulance is dispatched. But think about what she can tell the dispatcher. She doesn’t know the name of the garage. She doesn’t know which level she’s on. She might not even be sure which campus she’s at.

Meanwhile, your campus police officers are a few hundred yards away, working traffic and crowd control for the ceremony. Some of them have AEDs. They know every garage, every entrance, and every shortcut. They could be there in a couple of minutes.

They have no idea the call happened.

Why event days are different

On a normal weekday, most people on your campus are students, employees, and staff. They know the buildings. Many of them have your safety app. Your team knows the usual patterns.

Event days change all of that at once.

• The crowd is mostly strangers. On many event days, most of the people on campus are visitors who have never been there before.
• Nobody has your app. Visitors had no reason to download it, and they won’t stop to do it during an emergency.
• Nobody knows where they are. Visitors don’t know building names, lot numbers, or which entrance they came through. That makes it harder for them to give a 911 dispatcher a clear location.
• Emergencies are more likely. Large crowds, heat, alcohol at tailgates, long walks, and older or medically fragile guests all raise the odds that someone will need help.
• Your team is already on site. On event days your officers, security staff, and EMS partners are often deployed close by. Their response could be the fastest one available, but only if they know about the call.

This is the core problem. The days when your team is best positioned to respond are the same days when they’re least likely to hear about a 911 call.

Every campus has event days

This isn’t only a stadium problem. Almost every organization with a campus has days when the visitor count spikes:

• Colleges and universities: Football and basketball games, graduation, move-in weekend, orientation, family weekend, concerts, admitted student days
• K-12 districts: Friday night football, graduation ceremonies, school plays and concerts, field days, open houses, polling-place days
• Hospitals and health systems: Visiting hours, community health fairs, blood drives, large family gatherings around critical patients
• Corporate campuses: All-hands meetings, customer conferences, family days, community events, large contractor projects

If you plan staffing, parking, and traffic for these days, you should also plan for how your team will learn about 911 calls during them.

How 9Line Pinpoint closes the event day gap

9Line Pinpoint alerts your on-site safety team the moment anyone dials 911 from a cell phone inside your campus. It doesn’t matter whose phone it is or whether they’ve ever heard of your organization.

Pinpoint uses geofencing to draw precise virtual boundaries around the places that matter: your stadium or arena, parking garages and surface lots, tailgate areas, quads, and the walkways in between. When a 911 call comes from a cell phone inside one of those zones, your team gets an alert with the caller’s location right away.

For event days, that means:

• Visitors are covered automatically. There’s no app to download and nothing to register. The caller just dials 911 from their own phone, Apple or Android.
• Your team knows where to go. Every alert includes the caller’s coordinates in three dimensions, including altitude, so responders aren’t relying on a panicked visitor to describe a garage they’ve never seen before, or which level they’re on.
• Indoor and outdoor in one product. The arena concourse, the parking deck, and the tailgate lot are all covered.
• Your nearest responders can move first. The county still handles the call and dispatches help. Your officers, who may already be just a few hundred yards away, can start moving at the same time.
• Dispatchers can reach your team. Pinpoint sends your security team’s contact information to the 911 center, so the dispatcher handling the call knows who is on site and how to reach them.

Go back to the graduation day example. With Pinpoint, the daughter makes the same 911 call. This time, your officers get an alert showing the garage and the caller’s location. One of them grabs an AED and is there before the ambulance clears the traffic on the main road.

Before your next big event

Here are a few questions to bring to your next event planning meeting:

1. If a visitor dials 911 from the parking lot during our next event, how would our team find out? If the honest answer is “the county would call us” or “we might hear it on the radio,” you have a gap.
2. Are all of our event spaces covered? Think beyond the main venue. Overflow parking, shuttle stops, and tailgate areas are where visitors spread out and are hardest to find.
3. How do our responders get location details? Location relayed secondhand is slower and less precise than location sent straight from the call.
4. Does our plan depend on visitors using our app? If it does, it depends on something visitors will almost never do.

Frequently asked questions

Why are event days a 911 blind spot for campuses?

Event days are a 911 blind spot because visitors can make up most of the people on campus, and visitors don’t have the campus safety app or know building names and lot numbers. When a visitor dials 911 from a cell phone, the call goes to the county 911 center, and campus officers who may be a few hundred yards away may never hear about it.

Which campus event days create the biggest 911 gap?

The biggest 911 gap comes on days when visitor counts spike: football and basketball games, graduation, move-in weekend, orientation, and family weekend at colleges; Friday night football and graduation in K-12 districts; visiting hours and health fairs at hospitals; and all-hands meetings, customer conferences, and family days on corporate campuses.

Why can’t visitors give a 911 dispatcher a clear location on campus?

Campus visitors usually don’t know building names, lot numbers, garage levels, or which entrance they came through, and some may not be sure which campus they’re on. That makes it hard for them to tell a 911 dispatcher exactly where they are.

How does 9Line Pinpoint help on event days?

9Line Pinpoint geofences stadiums, arenas, parking garages, lots, tailgate areas, quads, and walkways. When anyone dials 911 from a cell phone inside those zones, Pinpoint alerts the on-site team with the caller’s coordinates, including altitude, with no app for visitors to download on Apple or Android, and sends the security team’s contact information to the 911 center.

What should a campus ask before its next big event?

Before its next big event, a campus should ask how its team would find out if a visitor dials 911 from a parking lot, whether overflow parking, shuttle stops, and tailgate areas are covered, how responders get location details, and whether its plan depends on visitors using the campus app.

See your event day coverage

Your biggest days should be your safest days. Let’s look at your venues, parking, and event spaces together and show you what Pinpoint coverage would look like on your campus.

Schedule a Pinpoint demo or email [email protected].