At least 15,000 more people now have the ability to text 911 during an emergency.
Boulder City Dispatch added this feature to their 911 system this week.
This comes two and a half years after Henderson dispatch made it available to their residents and people coming into their city limits.
"Henderson had already done this," said Ruby Perkins with Boulder City Police. "It laid the groundwork."
Perkins is also a resident of Boulder City and is excited to offer this life-saving feature to her community.
"I live in Boulder City so it's important to me that we stay current and provide the very best service that we can to our citizens and to our community," she said.
Texting to 911 is not to be done instead of calling 911 but rather in those moments where calling would be possible.
It's meant for those times where you might be in a domestic violence situation, in an active shooter situation, kidnapped, witnessing a home invasion, or you are hearing impaired.
"Sometimes the person can't talk...they're not in a safe position to talk so then the dispatcher is guessing and asking these open-ended questions like if you can't talk press one or tap on the phone," said Perkins.
But now, texting to 911 is meant to alleviate those hard to understand scenarios between the dispatcher and the person in the emergency.
"While they are giving me the information and while we are going back and forth on the text, I am going to be starting a call and getting some units in route to the address now that I have it," said Boulder City dispatcher Nicole St. Louis.
Henderson Police Department rolled out texting to 911 in May 2015. Since then, they've received 569 texts to 911.
The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department still does not have texting to 911 and was unable to tell us when they might be getting it.
It's important to note you do not have to live in Boulder City or Henderson to text to 911 in an emergency. You just have to be within the city limits when the emergency happens and when you send your text.
