You can text 911 in Pierce County now. But call if you can, and no emojis, please

You now can text 911 in an emergency in Pierce County.

South Sound 911, the regional dispatch agency for Pierce County’s 41 police and fire agencies, announced the new system Wednesday.

People should still call 911 for emergencies if they can.

But sending a text message is now an option if it’s not safe or not possible to call.

“I’m convinced that lives will be saved,” South Sound 911 executive director Andrew Neiditz said. “It’s going to make a difference.”

South Sound 911 has been receiving text messages for about a week as a sort of trial.

Kim Barnard, a communications officer and trainer for South Sound 911, told The News Tribune it’s hard to estimate how many emergency text messages Pierce County will get.

Barnard said Los Angeles County, for instance, saw about a 1 percent increase in emergency requests.

Pierce County gets about 2,500 calls a day, which means it might expect something like 25 texts a day if the Los Angeles experience holds true here.

Barnard said the system for text messages does not communicate with South Sound’s phone or computer systems. That means the person who receives the text message must paraphrase it for the emergency responders.

The text message system South Sound 911 uses allows it to have five text threads running at once. If five conversations are ongoing, a sixth texter would get a message telling that person to call 911.

That’s also the message 911 texters got before South Sound 911 launched the new system.

Officials caution that they don’t want the public to test the system.

Texts sent to 911 should only be for emergencies, they say.

The also advise that:

▪ The first text should state the emergency, city and exact location.

▪ The messages should be short and should not have emojis, abbreviations or attachments such as photos and videos.

▪ Group texts shouldn’t be used.

▪ It’s only available in English.

▪ Anyone who accidentally texts 911 should reply that they’re not in danger, there’s no emergency and that the message was a mistake.

Neiditz said the text-to-911 technology costs about $3,000 to $4,000 annually.

Pierce County is the 13th of the state’s 39 counties to launch it.

It’s been available in King, Kitsap, Snohomish and Thurston counties.

Neiditz said one of the first notable uses of the technology in Kitsap County was when a teenage girl texted that her friend was about to hurt herself. She didn’t think it was safe to call with the friend there, but she was able to send the message.

Abi McLane, an assistant director of Tacoma’s Crystal Judson Family Justice Center, said the technology is a new tool for reporting domestic violence when a call isn’t safe.

“We will most definitely incorporate text-to-911 into the safety plans for those we serve,” McLane said in a statement.

Steven Peck, with the state Office of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, said it’s important that people know the service is live. He’s had people ask him in the past why text-to-911 was not available in Pierce County.

“I said it’s a process,” he said.

Jim House, with the state Coalition on Inclusive Emergency Planning, said in a statement: “In the beginning, we had to depend on hearing people to make the calls for us and when automatic location identification became available, we were taught to dial 911 and then leave our phones off the hook, hoping and praying that help would arrive in time.”

Now, he said, text-to-911 is “an option that we can use when we are not at home with our videophones or captioned phones.”