Police, fire, ambulance and other emergency services exist to deal with the unexpected. So it only makes logical sense for first responders to be equipped with every tool that can possibly help them — because we don’t know ahead of time what they’ll need.

The Iowa Legislature, including Ames Rep. Lisa Heddens, for a little less than a year now has been kicking around a bill that would help dispatchers map the location of 911 calls made from mobile phones by installing something called Phase 2 wireless enhanced 911 service.

It’s a good example of foresight by our representatives — it hasn’t taken an ugly incident for them to recognize that more and more cell phones are being used and emergency calls from them are becoming more and, more prevalent.

Land line 911 calls in Story County already give dispatchers all the vital phone book information they need — they have done this for a long time.

A cell 911 call, though, can meet a variety of fates. Depending on what cell tower picks up the signal, your plea for help might go to Ames personnel, to Story County dispatchers — or it might go somewhere else entirely, warns the Story County Sheriff’s office. Even if you get local help, you’ll still need to know exactly where you are in order to get help quickly.

And that’s often unlikely. An Ames resident, making a particular trip for the umpteenth time, who has an auto accident and is trapped or otherwise injured might not have been paying attention to exactly where he or she was.

Pity all the more the freshman who already has no idea where anything is and won’t be able to use landmarks to make a determination.

In rural areas — most of Story County, really — knowing your location with the necessary precision is a near hopeless task, as an apparently drunk West Des Moines man who got very lost on his way home found out last week in a ditch near Roland, according to a Saturday Ames Tribune article.

Even accidents at home could be perilous, if the caller couldn’t think or speak, with the growing trend of eschewing home land lines and using a cell exclusively. Remember, emergencies are all about the strange and unexpected situations.

All the more reason why the Legislature should find a way to quickly pass legislation to raise the wireless surcharge from 50 cents per month to 75 cents or a dollar — whatever it takes to better 911 technology to allow dispatchers to find mobile phone callers quickly and get them the help they need. It is a thick layer of protection for a very small financial sacrifice.