I just ran across this interesting bit from Wikipedia. Sounds like a good idea.
“In May 2000, the Japan Coast Guard introduced a nationwide emergency number, 118, for reporting accidents at sea, oil spills, suspicious vessels, smuggling, and illegal immigration. It can be dialed from mobile phones, landline phones, public phones, and marine radiotelephones in Japan.“
Chuck Hill's CG Blog 
*CG used to work with mobile phones in the US but I’m not sure many people ever knew about it.
Depending on community resources dialing 911 was often a better choice. In the part of D13 I grew up in dispatchers would often launch local resources very rapidly while CG response was to ask lots of questions, brief the CoC, and carefully contempt launching assets with a much longer response time.
We used to have to tell the CG Radio operator to standby while we were talking directly with a police boat that was going to be on scene before USCG could make a decision to launch.