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The announcement got somewhat buried under the weight of this week’s news, but it bears noting: Washingtonians can now text 911 in the event of an emergency.

“Text to 911 gives people who are deaf, hard of hearing, or who have a speech disability as well as those who could be put in more danger by calling 911 an immediate connection to emergency services,” Mayor Muriel Bowser said in announcing the new service on Wednesday.

The Office of Unified Communications says that residents should “call if you can, text if you can’t.”

Locations services must be turned on, and text messages should be brief and easily understood.

The city notes that times when it would be appropriate to text 911 include in the case of a crime when the perpetrator is still nearby, when a person sustains injuries that prevent speaking, or for people who are deaf or hard of hearing.

“Text to 911 represents another step as our system evolves to Next Generation 911,” OUC Director Karima Holmes said, referring to a nationwide effort to revamp the emergency service (New York City announced on the same day that it would launch text to 911, for example).

It also comes amid a concerted effort to fix the widespread problems with the District’s emergency call center in recent years, including ambulances and fire trucks sent to the wrong address, outages (see: “catastrophic communications failure” caused by a power generator and accidental pressing of the emergency shutoff button), and long wait times.

A 2015 report showed that on a particular day, the average ambulance response time around 4 p.m. stretched beyond 17 minutes. By 5 p.m., the average number of ambulances on the road was fewer than 1.

Part of the blame, the administration said, was due to a stark increase in 911 calls (fire officials say that the city now has the highest per-capita call volume in the country) without a corresponding increase in hiring at OUC. That has since been remedied with a slate of new hires, along with the addition of a fleet of private ambulances. Plans are also in the works for a nurse triage line.