911, Please Hold
Reveal
The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX
4.7 • 8.7K Ratings
🗓️ 23 May 2026
⏱️ 53 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The 911 system functions as a sort of promise: Call for help and someone will be there to respond quickly. But in many American cities, it’s a broken promise.
Thanks in part to a widespread understaffing crisis across 911 dispatch centers, hundreds of thousands of callers are left waiting on hold during their most harrowing moments every year.
Reporter Byard Duncan has spent more than a year reporting on America’s flailing 911 system and what it might take to fix it. This week on Reveal, in partnership with Type Investigations, he traces the issue from California to Wisconsin and a final stop on Capitol Hill.
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Transcript
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| 1:06.0 | challenge is only available for a limited time. Stand up for the truth today. From the Center for |
| 1:14.5 | Investigative Reporting in PRX, this is Reveal. I'm Al Leutton. A few years ago, reporter Bayer Duncan |
| 1:22.4 | was out for a run in his neighborhood in Oakland, California, When he noticed smoke coming from the side of the road. |
| 1:29.4 | I think I could immediately smell, like a smoky smell. |
| 1:32.7 | I round a corner and all of a sudden I see this giant plume of smoke. |
| 1:37.4 | It's an enormous brushfire, going up the edge of the highway embankment. |
| 1:42.4 | And it's growing, getting closer to homes and a gas station. |
| 1:45.9 | And the flames were shooting way up into the air, probably 30 or 40 feet up into the air. And |
| 1:50.6 | the fire was spreading really, really fast. And you know when you see something like that |
| 1:54.5 | and first responders aren't there yet, you're catching it not too long into when it started. And so |
| 2:02.6 | because it was that big, I was pretty freaked out. So Bayard does what a lot of people would do. |
... |
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