The 211 San Diego assistance line has been up and running for five years, but local residents came face to face with it en masse during the 2007 wildfires that displaced 500,000 people and inundated the nonprofit? call centers, which logged 120,000 calls in 10 days.

The service went off-line before being rebooted by Qualcomm, which stepped in and offered its information technology staff and data center to get the service going again.

Since then, Qualcomm has served as 211? technology partner, as the service has emerged as a model for 250 such 211 assistance lines across the United States, says 211 San Diego CEO John Ohanian, who is lobbying Congress to fund a nationwide 211 program.

When Hurricane Gustav knocked out the 211 centers in Louisiana last fall, residents?calls to 211 were routed seamlessly to the San Diego call center with the help of Qualcomm, says Brian Baker, vice president of information technology for Qualcomm, who represents the chip maker on the 211 board.

211 San Diego logs 250,000 calls a year, and directs people to the county? 5,000 service programs. It also allows service providers to pinpoint where calls for assistance are coming from in order to allocate resources to certain ZIP codes.

Qualcomm employees have volunteered 1,000 man-hours to support 211, and the telecom giant is working with 211 San Diego to support the call center virtually ?through cloud computing ?where the call traffic is routed through servers in various locations and, therefore, not vulnerable to geographic-specific disruptions such as wildfires and earthquakes. That move is 12-18 months away, says Baker.

The call center at Kearny Mesa, where 211 staff members and volunteers work, is staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Lately, 211 has been providing critical information to residents worried about the H1N1 virus, known as swine flu, says Ohanian.

?n terms of need, more and more people are calling,?said Ohanian, who adds that calls to 211 help alleviate 911 emergency calls.

Since the economic recession kicked into high gear ?from July 1 through March 31 ?23 percent of the calls to 211 San Diego have come from people seeking economic help, whether they have lost a job, are struggling with foreclosure or eviction, need to find health care services or are fighting to put food on the table, according to Ohanian.

That? a 24 percent increase in need-based inquiries.

?hat? making our responsiveness possible is the support of organizations like Qualcomm, which provides technical assistance and infrastructure that allow us to be able to process the high volume of these critically important calls,?he said.

Ohanian organized the group? annual Join Our Journey luncheon, which recognized Qualcomm CEO and Chairman Paul Jacobs and the publicly traded company, May 12 at the Hilton La Jolla Torrey Pines.