Check out what Brian Lingard wrote on 15 Jun 96  12:42:13:
 BL> Speaking of emergencies, i was on a 2 m repeater in peterborough
 BL> Ontario one day while visiting my aunt and a ham asked if anyone
 BL> had a phone handy, big collision.
 BL> I said yes and got the details, went into huse to grab phone.
 BL> Darned if i remembered whee it was!  Then sure enough, behind the
 BL> door!  Called ontario provincial police and found they knew about
 BL> the accident and were sending ambulance.
 BL> I said guy on radio said skip the ambulance bring the coronor and
 BL> heavy extraction equipment.
 BL> Cops said they didn't know it was that bad, said yup.
 BL> Seems university student got clobbered on her way home from
 BL> registering for classes at Trent university.  Another ham i knew
 BL> in toronto knew her and the family.  Small world eh?
 BL> Sure handy to have communication.  Alternative would be for your
 BL> parents to get a ham license and carry a 2 m radio with them.
 BL> In Ontario there is usually a repeater around and someone
 BL> listening to relay urgent traffic.
 BL> Not sure how well covered alberta is.
Well, the last thing in the world my parents would do is get an Amateur 
licence....they were disgusted enough when I got mine.
The coverage along the highway between Calgary and Medicine Hat, is pretty 
pour....and some of the repeaters along the way seem to be pretty dead.  I 
don't know if there's somebody monitoring for emergency purposes only or not. 
 I've thought about building an LTZ decoder for my scanner at home....
Locally, we've had no problems with calling 911 using the autopatch.  When 
the call comes in, its automatically flagged as coming from an 
Amateur....this way they won't send emergency vehicles to the airport if the 
call drops.  (our patch is located in the emergency services hq building 
there)  Well, one change we made was the change the speed dial from *1 to 
*91.....the problem was sometimes the second digit drops when dialing *1x and 
getting 911 is kind of an annoyance.
One of our local hams is a paramedic/dispatcher.....he set things up along 
with a couple other things during his term as president of our club (I served 
as secretary during that year).
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