911 Plea: Call Only in Matter of Life or Death : Communications: After lines were clogged for relatively minor rain-related problems, residents are urged to help themselves unless it’s truly an emergency.

The rains that battered Orange County also brought a torrent of calls from frantic and curious residents that swamped local 911 emergency systems, officials said Friday.

The suddenness of the downpours Wednesday and the sheer volume of calls--many of which were to report flooded homes or ask where to get sandbags--backed up the system reserved for handling life-threatening crises and caused minor delays in dispatching emergency workers, communications officials said.

The backlog of calls grew into the dozens at the peak of the storm between 4 and 6 p.m., prompting the Orange County Fire Department to issue radio warnings telling people they were on their own to cope with flooding unless they faced a threat to life.

“It caught everybody off-guard. It came on so quickly,” said Jean Ferrell, who manages a four-city communications system for fire and paramedic calls. “Under the circumstances, we did very well, but we did have to decide what we could and could not do.”

The experience caused managers of the North Net system, which handles fire and medical aid calls for Anaheim, Garden Grove, Fullerton and Orange, to set up a special recording containing flood information for today’s expected storm.

Authorities said they understand why the 911 system gets used improperly. “If your lights go out in an entire area and you don’t know what’s going on, you’d probably call 911 too,” said Maria Sabol, spokeswoman for the County Fire Department.

But she and others urged residents to avoid dialing 911 unless they face life-threatening danger.

“A lot of people consider water coming in their house an emergency,” said Steve Rothert, a supervisor for the Central Net, which serves Huntington Beach, Westminster, Fountain Valley and Newport Beach. “It’s not a life-threatening emergency.”

Hundreds of calls poured in to dispatchers during the storm, ranging from reports of car crashes and heart attacks to flooded basements.

Ferrell said that during the two-hour peak, about 800 calls were routed to the six dispatchers serving the North Net system that she manages. The Central Net dispatch system registered 287 calls on 911 and its seven-digit emergency lines from noon to midnight, Rothert said. Extra dispatchers were summoned to work and business telephone lines were used to handle the overflow calls. The County Fire Department received 572 calls during the day.

The volume backed up the entire 911 system, in which calls go first to local police departments and then are routed to fire departments in cases of fire or medical emergencies. The backup meant it took a minute or two longer to respond to emergencies in the four North Net cities, Ferrell said.

Rothert said it took up to two hours for firefighters to get to lower-priority cases and, as requests piled up, some residents were called back to see if they still needed help.

“I don’t know how many people might have called 911 and got a busy signal, but that’s where the danger lies” when lines are tied up with non-emergency calls, said Travis Williams, communications manager for the Anaheim Police Department. Dispatchers there handled an average of one call every 30 seconds during the peak hours.

Strained as it was, the system held up, officials said. “We never did have any failures,” Rothert said.

The vast majority of the calls were for matters other than life-threatening emergencies. Some people reported brimming flood channels, while others called to learn what to do when water entered their homes. Some callers even expected sandbags to be delivered to their homes, officials said.

“You tell them where the sandbags are and they don’t go and get them,” groused one fire dispatcher. “You have to explain we only have so many firemen to come to homes. They want their own personal fireman.”

In an attempt to stave off a similar deluge of emergency calls during future heavy rains, officials urged residents to prepare for flooding by stocking up on sandbags and batteries for portable radios--especially if they live in areas that have been inundated before.

“If people have flooding in front of their house, a 911 call isn’t going to do you any good,” said Sabol of Orange County Fire Department. “We’re handling so many emergencies at one time, we’re not going to come out and remove water. A private company will have to do that.”