We all know 9-1-1 operators receive more than a few terrible calls each year, but it turns out the City of Vancouver's 3-1-1 contact centre fielded its own fair share of strange inquiries in 2020.
For example, can you keep a camel in Vancouver, if only for its milk?
As City of Vancouver staff explained in a news release, that question "was one of the most memorable" posed to the city’s 3-1-1 contact centre in the last calendar year.
And, if you're wondering, livestock (including camels) are not permitted to be kept in Vancouver backyards.
The contact centre is intended as a tool for Vancouver residents and businesses, offering a single point-of-access to important city information and non-emergency services.
Each year, the citizen service representatives on the receiving end of the city's phone line "receive a wide range of questions, from the mundane to the weird and the wonderful," reads the release. To the surprise of absolutely no one, "last year was no exception."
Some of the more unique calls these representatives dealt with in 2020 included one resident who asked, "Can you remove a dog from my bedroom? A friend left it, but I don’t know who." Animal Services was dispatched, according to the city.
Another caller contacted 3-1-1 to advise city staff of some trees in Vancouver's open data set that the caller claimed were incorrectly listed as apple trees.
"I’ve been eating the fruit and they are definitely not apples," they said. (Unfortunately, city representatives were not able to confirm what the caller had eaten.)
One caller contacted 3-1-1 because they "heard we’re allowed to dump one mattress and one piece of furniture in a back alley each year," and wanted to confirm the rumour was correct.
The caller was promptly informed that dumping any items in back alleys is, in fact, illegal in Vancouver year-round.
The four above-mentioned calls represented only a few of the nearly 1 million interactions across all contact centre channels that 3-1-1 staff experienced in 2020.
The most frequently asked questions don't relate to camel-related inquiries, unfortunately, but instead request information about property tax, empty homes tax, and home owner grants.
The 3-1-1 contact centre first launched as a phone line in 2009. Today, it encompasses a growing number of channels through which Vancouverites can submit service requests and civic-related inquiries. According to the city, phone remains the most popular method of contact for local residents, with the centre experiencing 505,307 calls in 2020.
To date, there have been over 13 million interactions to date across all of the Centre's channels, including the 3-1-1 phone line, VanConnect app, live chat online, and the City of Vancouver's official social media accounts.
