1-1-1

111 (usually pronounced one-one-one) is the emergency telephone number in New Zealand. It was first implemented in Masterton and Carterton on 29 September 1958, and was progressively rolled out nationwide with the last exchanges converting in 1988. In 2008, 111 celebrated fifty years of service.

Before the introduction of 111, access to emergency services was complicated. For the quarter of New Zealand’s then 414,000 telephone subscribers that were still on manual exchanges, one would simply pick up the telephone and ask the answering operator for the police, ambulance, or fire service by name. However, the problem was on manual exchanges the calls were answered first-come-first-served, which meant on busy exchanges, emergency calls could be delayed. For automatic exchanges, one would need to look up the local police, ambulance or fire service’s telephone number in the telephone directory, know the number by heart, or dial the toll operator and ask them to place the call. The problem was that the numbers were different for each exchange, and again, there was no way to tell emergency calls apart from regular calls. Auckland, for example, had 40 telephone exchanges, and the telephone directory had 500 pages to search through to find the right number, although the separate emergency numbers for fire, police and ambulance in the main service area (e.g. Auckland, but not for not minor exchanges) were listed in bold on the first page.

Following the 1947 Ballantynes fire in Christchurch, fire officer Arthur Varley was recruited from the UK to bring about the reform of the fire service. Familiar with Britain’s 999 system, he campaigned for there to be a universal emergency telephone number across the country. In mid-1957, a committee was set up to institute a common emergency number across New Zealand, consisting of the Post and Telegraph Department, the Police, the Health Department, and the Fire Service. In early 1958, the Postmaster General approved the provision of the service using the number 111.

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