May 2, 2007 -- People living close to the state line are losing valuable time as they have to wait longer to get to talk to the proper 911 operator.

Denny Hidinger said he called 911 from his cell phone to help his girlfriend.

"My girlfriend had fallen off the porch, she was claiming that her neck and back were injured, she couldn't move from the spot. We have a real high porch," said Denny Hidinger from Chaparral, N.M.

Hidinger lives in Otero County, right next to El Paso County.

"It took almost 45 minutes for someone to get over to the house," said Hidinger.

One of the reasons why it takes a long time to dispatch emergency crews to a location is because people are using their cell phones to call 911.

People who live near the state line, like Denny, are learning the hard way that their calls are getting dispatched to El Paso first.

"The cell towers don't recognize state boundaries," said the 911 District Director Joe Lorkowski.

Lorkowski said the problem is worse on the west side where you have New Mexico, Mexico and Texas. He said the El Paso 911 Center gets calls from New Mexico all the time. When that happens the call gets transferred to the Las Cruces dispatch center.

"You're wasting time, the time you call 911 over there they give you a number, a lot of things could happen," said another Chaparral resident, Robert Lizarraga.

Lizarraga said he had the same experience when he made a 911 call. Lorkowski said the same thing has happened where El Paso callers get routed to the Las Cruces dispatch.

"There are times that somebody will be on that piece of road or in an area that's at the fringe of a cell tower that goes a fourth of a mile into New Mexico but covers over a mile of Texas," said Lorkowski.

For Chaparral residents like Robert and Denny, they said they've learned to used their landlines for emergencies.

"If they're out in Chaparral, use a land line, because you will get Las Cruces dispatch and they'll be out here quicker," said Hidinger.

The El Paso 911 center is in the process of making an upgrade to better serve our area. Currently, the center has phase I wireless, which gives them the call back number and the address of the tower.

By next year, it's expected to upgrade to phase II which will give operators an address within 100 yards of where the caller is.

Lokrowski said this system may not be perfect but it will be better.