Little Girl Calls 911 For Ill Father; The Call Is Priceless

Part of the conversation between Savannah, age 5 and
a 911 dispatcher she called when her father became ill.  

I'm not sure which TV show this is from, but the host plays parts of a 911 call placed by a five year old girl named Savannah

Her father was having chest pains and couldn't breathe well.

She did an excellent job taking care of her father and talking to the 911 dispatcher while waiting for the ambulance to arrive, but she also tried to be a fashionista in the process.

You'll hear the fashionista bit when you listen to the call. Remember, you MUST always be fashion forward, even in an emergency.

Savannah handled a scary situation with aplomb, so we salute jer. She kept reassuring everyone, "So far, so good," which were nice updates.

Oh, and her father pulled through just fine.

Awesome! Watch/Listen to this video:

Outrage: Elderly, Sick Man Has To Dial 911 Just To Get Food To Live On

 Clarence Blackmon, an elderly cancer patient,
had to call 911 to get groceries because
 the rehab center he was at discharged him
and left him to his own devices. Assholes.  n

The following story has been presented in the media as a heartwarming story, but I'm outraged by it.

An elderly man, weak with prostate cancer, was discharged from a hospital and sent home. Great! He's recovering with the help of family and visiting nurses and plenty of follow up care from the hospital.

Just kidding!

He was dumped into the house and left to his own devices and was physically incapable of getting any food. The man got so desperate that he called 911 and asked someone there to buy him groceries.

"What i need is someone to get to the grocery store and bring me food, because I need to eat something. Whatever you can do to help. I can't do anything. I can't go anywhere. I can't get out of my damn chair," Clarence Blackmon told 911 dispatcher Marilyn Hinson, according to the Huffington Post. 

Click on this sentence to listen to the tough 911 call Blackmon placed

Luckily, the 911 operators didn't tell him that they were only for emergencies and tell him to go away. Hinson  recognized this was an emergency.  Hinson's supervisor entered Blackmon's name into the computer and learned he was ill and had no family in the area. Blackmon's wife died in 2011.

They also discovered Blackmon had withered away to 115 pounds in large part because he was unable to get food for himself.

Hinson went to Blackmon's house with officers from the Fayetteville, North Carolina Police Department to deliver groceries. They also made sure that Blackmon would get follow up care and help.

That's the heartwarming part.

Here's why I'm outraged, though. It appears as if the hospital just discharged Blackmon without making sure he would get the help for follow up treatment. What, was the old guy unprofitable now? Maybe used up his insurance or something? Groceries don't make pharmaceutical companies profitable like pills do, was that the problem?

According to the Inquisitor and ABC News, the private treatment and rehabiliitation center that discharged Blackmon never bothered to contact the North Carolina Department of Social Services, as they should have.

The DSS is now involved, helping Blackmon, and an outpouring of donations because of news reports about this incident are going to Blackmon and others who need help.  (He's donating the extra food he can't keep to the Salvation Army.)

Still, my blood is boiling. Does this rehabilitation hospital and others in the country just dump people out on the street when they're done with them, figuring they'll just die a quiet death and stop bothering everyone for shrieks?

I hope the people who did this to Blackmon at the hospital are punished BIG TIME. It's also time for investigation on how other hospitals and rehab centers discharge people who can't fend for themselves.

Now there's a good story idea for you journalists and muckrakers out there.

911, What Is Your Non-Emergency?

I'm totally fascinated by people who call 911 for the stupidest of reasons.

Yet another dumb 911 call.  

And this is coming from me, who probably has called 911 pretty often compared to most people (I've called 911 to report an apartment building fire, a car crash in front of my house, another car crash with injuries, and an erratic driver on Interstate 89, and a disabled vehicle, also on I-89, which was stopped in a travel lane)

But you can argue my 911 calls were fairly reasonable.

Other people, not so much.

Recently, in southwestern British Columbia, the local EMS agency made a Top 10 list of the worst 911 calls, according to the Vancouver Sun.  

1. A caller phoned 911 to ask about renting a fire truck to block off a street for a party.
2. A caller phoned 911 to get their date's contact information so they could confirm details of their plans.
3. A called phoned 911 to report a missed newspaper deliver.
4. A called asked 911 if they can get the "OK" to drive in the HOV lane because "traffic is backed up and they are late for an important meeting."
5. A caller dials 911 to activate voicemail on his cellphone.
6. A caller phones 911 and says, "I threw my phone into the garbage and I can't get it out."
7. A caller dials 911 to ask for a morning wake-up call.
8. A caller dials 911 to ask how to call the opertor.
9. A caller contacts 911 to ask, "Can an officer come over to tell my kids to go to bed?"
10. A caller phones 911 and says, "My son won't give me the remote control.."

Other 911 doozies are easy to find.
For instance, a woman named Carol Frances Omeara called 911 back in October in Montana to report that she was, in her words, "too damn drunk."
So drunk, she couldn't get out of her car.

She was charged with DUI, according to the Billings Gazette. 

Intersting brownies prompted this 911 call.  

Last February, an Indiana man called 911 nine times within 90 minutes to order a cheeseburger. WISH-TV reported Gregory Jackson never got his cheeseburger, but did get arrested.

Burgers seem to be in demand among people who call 911 for stupid reasons. Last April in Florida, Jarvis Sutton, 34, was arrested because he called 911 operators 80 times to request "Kool-Aid, burgers and weed," according to the Tampa Bay Times. 

At least Jarvis shattered a stereotype. Who said potheads had no ambition? Calling 80 times is pretty productive, don't you think?  And he was hungry. Police didn't deliver his food, but after Jarvis was arrested, he started munching on the foam in the seat while he was in the backseat of the police cruiser.

You want even more stupid 911 calls, here's a web site called www.911callers.com. It's all audiotapes of these moronic calls. It's  great time waster on a cold day. I especially liked the old lady who called 911 to ask someone to come over and open her beer bottles for her.

"Breaking Bad" Fans in Connecticut Fail To Give 911 Operators A Break

I can certainly understand the rage of somebody who is a HUGE fan of a television show, only to have the cable service fail just befor the program starts.

Yeah, it's a a great show, but calling 911 when the cable
fritzes out just before the show begins?  

Like many people, some residents of Connecticut were salivating over a new episode of "Breaking Bad" Sunday night when the cable went out.

Some did the only logical stupidest possible thing. They called 911 to help. As most of us know and Fairfield Police Department  had to remind people, 911 is for life threatening emergencies.

Like the kind of murder and mayhem and drugs you might find depicted on "Breaking Bad." Not the frustration of being able watch the (fictional!!) mayhem on your big screen TV because the cable is out.

Fairfield Police actually had to issue this Facebook post:

"NOTICE: We are receiving numerous 911 calls regarding the Cablevision outage. This is neither an emergency or a police related concern. Please direct your inquiries to Cablevision.
911 should only be called for Life Threatening Emergencies ONLY.
Incidents that are not of an emergency nature may be reported to the Fairfield Police Department at 203-254-4800.
Misuse of the 911 system may result in an arrest.

Besides, what were the 911 responders, police, and fire and rescue and whatnot supposed to do about the cable television problem?  I don't think they have a magic wand that switches the cable back on when it hiccups. 

And really, you might feel like you're having a heart attack for missing "Breaking Bad" but you're not. Trust me. Even though I'm not a doctor.

I supposed if you were that mad about the cable dying before the show started you could go hit somebody who works at the cable company. Then it would become a matter for 911 after all, wouldn't it?