During the course of Roger's mishap, part of the problem is that we were quite a ways up the Klickitat canyon where noone had cell-service to call out. According to the fire-med lady who spoke to us, you CAN actually make calls to 911 even when you have no service for your cellphone. Most of us did not know that fact.

After researching, there are some limitations to that statement, mostly involving the fact that there must be SOME sort of cell coverage, but even if you are with one carrier and have no service to normally make a call, but are within another carrier's area, you can absolutely make a 911 call.

Something to keep in mind when you are off on a roadtrip in the middle of nowhere and something happens, you might still be able to make an emergency call.
General rule of thumb is to also keep your cellphone turned on so they can use it as a tracking device through GPS and cell tower triangulation in case of a critical emergency.

 

good information

 

Thanks for getting this information up Aaron

 

Thanks for that info. It's something that everyone should know. Thanks again.

 

I did dial 911, but there was absolutely no coverage in that canyon - nada, zip, zilch.

 

i was under the impression that some phones now a days, with a 911 call would jump into an emergency mode and let you make a sat-phone call.

 

Interesting.

He made it seem like the phone will switch to an analog network to find coverage.