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In Australia our emergency phone number is 000, but prior to 1969 Australia did not have a nation number for emergency services. Each service fire, ambo and police each had many different numbers.
In 1961 the postmaster general introduced the Triple Zero number in major populated centres. Near the end of the 1980 it was extended to a nationwide coverage.
Triple Zero was chosen for several reasons, it suited the dialling system for the most remote automatic exchanges like in outback Queensland such communities used the 0 to select an automatic trunk line to a centre and in the most remote communities two 0s had to be used to reach a main centre; thus dialling 000 was considered best also it was felt that it would be easy to dial 000 in the dark.
You can call 000 from a mobile phone even if the phone is locked or in Australia you can also call 112 from a mobile phone to reach an operator who will connect you to the right emergency service.
911 was at one point considered as a potential emergency number, though existing phone numbers starting with 911 made this unfeasible. However, if a person was to call 911 the call would be re-routed to 000. Since many young people have heard of 911 which is the emergency number in the USA and Canada.
Here in Australia we also have the 131444 phone number for police but that is not for emergencies it is for other police matters it is also a nationwide number, I think.
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Good to know if I ever visit...
ReplyDeleteIt was a different post one I have thought about for a while
DeleteYes, we do use 911 in the USA. We used to dial 0 for the operator who would connect us to the emergency responders.
ReplyDeleteNow I didn't know about the dialling 0 how long ago was that
DeleteHow interesting. I think 000 would be much easier to dial than 911. Wish we had that one here in the USA.
ReplyDeleteIt should be easy but when my daughter spilt her head open I tried ringing 888 because I was in a state and was hitting the wrong number
DeleteI'm trying to remember when dialing 911 became our standard number for emergencies. It might have been as long as 30+ years ago. When we had only one phone company, we could dial 0 for operator and get a phone company operator to help us. When I was a child, my mother had to dial the operator to be able to make a long distance call to her mother. She had to tell the operator the number she was calling. Then I think it advanced to just saying "I want to make a long distance call." I'm not sure when direct dialing for long distance began.
ReplyDeleteLove,
Janie
I can remember having to dial 0 to get the operator here as well and when you wanted to make a trunk call you had to ring the operator and give the number and wait to be connected, now of course we have direct dialling as well so much easier
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