Robin wrote
NY wrote

Even before that, I'd expect an emergency control room to have
all the paper OS maps, maybe unfolded, laminated and mounted
on boards for extra durability, for the area that they cover. (*)

I suggest it is mobile phones which cause many of the problems.

In fact it fixes many now that mobile phones report their
location to the emergency services completely automatically.

Before they came along the location of the landline was known
to the 999 operator who could pass it on the the services, and
most callers would have been able to say what they had done
to get /to/ the phone from which the services could work back.

And now when they call on their mobile, emergency services knows
where the mobile phone is, very accurately when the phone has GPS.