ST. THOMAS - Three days after the switch to the new digital emergency system that is supposed to allow cell phone users to dial 911, the system failed to do so.

On Oct. 23, when Terre Drew dialed 911 from her cell phone bleeding, in pain and afraid, she was connected to a police dispatcher - in Puerto Rico.

"I just called 911 and got Puerto Rico, then got disconnected," Drew, 28, said.

Drew called police from her home on the west end of St. Thomas. The dispatcher responded in Spanish and attempted to transfer her call to a St. Thomas dispatcher. That call was disconnected.

Without a land line, Drew frantically searched for a phone book to find the correct number to call. Finally, she dialed 776-9110, the number for cell phone users to reach emergency services before last week's switch. Drew dialed the number and reached an officer, but not a police dispatcher, she said.

"He said, 'We can't call for you. You have to call yourself,'" she said. "I started crying."

Drew explained to the officer, the problems she had reaching police. After several minutes she persuaded the officer to help her.

"He had me on the line and had them on the other line and had to relay the information," Drew said. "That was horrible."

The technical problem is a departure from what officials said on Wednesday was a system that could receive 911 calls from cell phone users.

Mark Walters, V.I. Territory Emergency Management Agency state director, said Drew must have picked up a cell tower on Puerto Rico. Out of the thousands of calls handled to date with the new 911 system, this is the only time he is aware of that a call went to Puerto Rico instead of the center off Moravian Highway.

However, there is a plan in development to travel to Puerto Rico within the next week to standardize a protocol for handling emergency calls between the territory and the Puerto Rico, he said.

The center is part of a $17 million project that includes the updated emergency call system and a new headquarters for VITEMA. Developing the state-of-the-art center was a collaboration between VITEMA and the Bureau of Information Technology.

Paul Arnold Jr., director of the Bureau of Information Technology, said the problem is not with their system but with the cell phone service providers who don't have enough towers for the island.

"That will continue to happen until they put additional cell sites in that area," Arnold said. "The calls are going to get picked up by a cell tower in Puerto Rico. It's going to hit the closest cell site and pick up that tower."

But being on the west end doesn't explain why Drew's call to the seven-digit emergency number wasn't properly routed.

"When we went live, that number was automatically routed to 911," Walters said. "Maybe she dialed the wrong number."

Walters said he needs more information from Drew in order to troubleshoot the issue and plans to talk with Drew about the situation.

"In a bad situation, you don't need technical difficulties making the situation worse for you," Drew said.