From what I've heard, 911 operators regularly get people calling them for non-emergencies. The 911 operator's job is to judge whether the caller is actually reporting a legitimate emergency, and if so, route the report to the correct emergency personnel (fire/police/ambulance/etc) OR disregard the report as a non-emergency.
The end of the article seems to confirm the false positives didn't actually have any real negative impact. So legitimate emergencies were not drowned out by the accidental dialing.
> Thankfully, that wasn’t enough false 911 calls to overwhelm the local system and prevent responders from dealing with real emergencies that weekend, and with the help of festival organizers, the local authorities were able to locate the source of every false 911 call to determine that no actual emergencies were being reported.
Obviously eliminating false positives would be ideal. But if the false positives aren't overloading 911 operators, seems like maybe a non-issue? Especially if these things can be predicted, e.g. local emergency personell should be aware of a local festival anyway (and can be on alert for these false positives, assuming it's not so bad as to drown out actual emergencies).
Many people have an irrational fear of dialing 911. If you do it right now, someone will pickup the phone, and if you simply say "Sorry, I didn't mean to dial!" you won't get in trouble and the 911 operator will gladly let you off the line.