Painfully bad movie

This is an example of the kind of fail that can happen when a writer doesn't do even the absolute minimum amount of research. Police departments are not pizza delivery shops. They don't tell you "Okay, 30 minutes!" when you call to tell them that the patients in a maximum security asylum are running loose and cannibalizing people.

Psychiatric hospitals are run to the same standards as prisons, and it's not just a few bumbling idiots running the place -- they'd have security staff, doctors, nurses and a specially trained crisis response team on duty 24/7 to deal with violence. They would remain in constant contact with their area's OEM or 911 center, as well as nearby police departments, sheriff's departments, and state police substations. In fact, cops would be constantly coming and going. These are patients who are in a maximum security facility because a judge put them there, and the cops and COs are the people who securely bring them to the hospital and to court.

Bottom line: A call like that goes to 911, especially from a trapped civilian, and the police are there ASAP in force, with backup from every department in the area, sheriff's deputies, state troopers, etc. Dozens of patrol cars, cops with guns drawn at every entrance, helicopters circling above. Even in a rural area in 1989.