Nearly 1,000 accidental 911 calls were made last week during Bonnaroo, many coming from iPhones

By Stacey Cameron

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    NASHVILLE, Tennessee (WSMV) — The accidental calls to the Coffee County 911 Communication Center began Tuesday, shortly after the Bonnaroo gates opened for campers, and did not end until the festival closed on Sunday.

In total, close to 1,000 accidental 911 calls were made over six days, flooding the three-person communication center.

Many of the calls originated from iPhones, leading public safety officials to initially believe Apple’s new Crash Detection feature on iPhones and Apple Watches was responsible for this electronic version of the boy who cried wolf.

In the case of an accident, Crash Detection is designed to call 911 if the phone or watch owner is unresponsive and cannot respond to a prompt from the device.

To combat the deluge of accidental 911 calls, on Thursday Manchester Police took to social media, asking festival goers to disable “crash detection” on their phones.

But according to Apple, by Friday it became apparent that the accidental calls originating from Bonnaroo were caused by “butt dialing” and not crash detection. The end result, according to Coffee County officials, was a tripling of their daily average accidental 911 calls during the festival’s run, resulting in more than fifty hours of overtime work according to county officials.

While these calls were not true emergencies, Brandon Abley, the Director of Technology with NENA: The 911 Association, says the volume of calls poses a real threat to public safety.

“A telecommunicator can’t just decide that this sounds like an accidental call and not deal with it,” Abley said. “Because of that, it takes a lot of time to deal with these calls and ties up the center.”

This year’s festival at Bonnaroo is not the first time that iPhones have caused fits for 911 communication centers in Tennessee. Two summers ago, at Dollywood, people riding roller coasters and other jarring amusement park rides were dialing 911 up to 50 times per day.

That lead the Sevier County 911 Director to issue a public plea, asking Dollywood patrons to put their phones on airplane mode while riding the park’s rides.

Abley says these instances show that accidental 911 calls are going to happen, but there is something the public can do to keep these occurrences from becoming a threat to public safety, do not hang up if you accidentally call for emergency help.

“If you don’t talk to them, they may send law enforcement to do a welfare check, and that is a tremendous waste of public resources,” said Abley. “And if 911 or the Sheriff’s office calls or texts back after an accidental call, respond to them, don’t ignore that call or text, because that could prompt a welfare check.”

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