Vicksburg Warren 911 received its first ever text for help earlier this week.

At around 1:30 p.m. Monday, a text was received at the Vicksburg Warren 911 center about a verbal altercation in which one of the individuals involved did not want the other to know they were seeking help.

“With that situation that was a legitimate use of text,” director Chuck Tate said.

Tate said people should only text 911 when it is the only method they have accessible to reach out for help.

Those who are in a position to call should do so, he said.

“While we have the system up and running, we still want people making a voice call if at all possible,” Tate said.

Texting takes more time to receive a response and to get all the information the telecommunicators need. He said 10 minutes of texting could equal one minute of conversation over the telephone.

“We don’t want people to be texting instead of calling because it takes a lot longer to take care of a text transmission than it does to make a phone call,” Tate said. “It’s not anywhere near as efficient as a telephone call.”

Tate said the advantages of text is that people in danger can reach out for help while not putting themselves in the position of being overheard, and phones that are not receiving full service can typically get a text sent.

“When you can’t maintain a telephone connection, you’re on the fringe areas of service, you can often get a text to go through because it’s a burst of transmission,” Tate said.

Vicksburg Warren 911 has been working towards being able to accept text messages in addition to traditional calls for help since this fall when the 911 offices upgraded the phone system and put in new software. The system allowing telecommunicators to accept texts has been up and running for a couple months, Tate said. He said all texts should be able to reach 911 now, but ultimately it depends on the phone carrier.

“It takes a little while for the carriers to make the transition and get their stuff in place,” Tate said. “All the phone companies are suppose to be able to do it now, but we can’t guarantee that. That’s a phone company dependent operation. There’s large parts of this total system we don’t have control over.”

He said ultimately anyone in danger should contact 911 first rather than calling a friend or relative. Calls sometimes come in to 911 secondhand, and Tate said it could be unsafe if the people in danger do not contact 911 themselves. Contact received from the person in danger should get help sent sooner and authorities can be better informed.