Non-emergency 911 calls to Kings District RCMP spiked during Fiona

Non-emergency 911 calls were more than double the average last month in the wake of post-tropical storm Fiona, according to Kings District RCMP.

During the first eight hours of the storm making landfall on P.E.I., Kings District RCMP received 15 non-emergency 911 calls. 

Calls to 911 often spike during major storms, according to Sgt. Shaun Coady, and Fiona was major. He said Kings District RCMP usually gets about 20 to 25 non-emergency 911 calls in a typical month. In September, there were 45. 

"It was essentially people calling for trees down," Coady said. 

"Often in that type of event, during a hurricane, we just indicated that we will document but we are not going to respond to the area. It's challenging for us, given the weather conditions on that day in particular, we couldn't get to some of these calls. The roads were blocked."

He said the weather itself is to blame for some of the calls — a power line going down or a telephone line coming loose because of high winds can trigger what are referred to as static 911 calls.

Others come accidentally when people are trying to access their voicemail or due to some other error.

A testament to emergency crews

But he reminded residents to use 911 only in the case of legitimate emergencies.

"That storm was larger than probably people were anticipating and they may not have realized the volume of damage ... People thought they were reporting an isolated incident when in fact it was more widespread damage," he said.

We would prefer that people use the 911 system for emergencies only.- Sgt. Shaun Coady, Kings District RCMP

"It doesn't seem to be an overburden, but we would prefer that people use the 911 system for emergencies only."

He said emergency personnel did head out the night of the storm to respond to several emergency calls.

"The conditions were adverse at the time," he said.

"The members and fire and EMS all came together to get through it, so it's really a testament to the [emergency crews] and the groups that went out to weather the storm and help people."