13 January 2009
Hoax 999 calls cost money – but more importantly they can cost lives.
The government puts the cost of attending each false alarm at £2,000. Figures just in for 2008 show that Buckinghamshire Fire & Rescue Service responded to 209 malicious false alarms during the year, adding up to £418,000.
Thanks to a rigorous call-challenging process, highly trained and experienced staff in the emergency Control Room were able to identify a further 232 hoax calls and nip them in the bud.
Area Manager Mick Martin said: “When firefighters and fire appliances are sent to calls which turn out to be hoaxes, it means they are not available to attend real emergencies. This, in turn, puts lives at risk.
“How would the people making these calls feel if someone close to them had urgent need of the emergency services, only to find they were delayed because someone had made a time-wasting call?”
“We trace and record all 999 calls, and this information is then used to help catch the culprits when a hoax call is made. We also collaborate with mobile phone providers and can arrange to have a phone disconnected if it is used more than once to make a hoax call.”
Buckinghamshire Fire & Rescue Service’s efforts to reduce the annual number of hoax calls, which include Key Stage 3 visits to schools, have been paying dividends over the years.
The total number of hoax calls is down from 627 in 2003 to 441 in 2008.
Mick added: “We will not be getting complacent simply because the figure is gradually coming down. We will continue to do everything in our power to reduce this figure further and work with Thames Valley Police to seek to prosecute culprits.”
Case study 1
On 29 December 2008, a hoax 999 call to a car crash meant firefighters needed at a genuine incident were delayed by several minutes
While two crews from Aylesbury Fire Station were searching for the incident on the A413 between Aylesbury and Whitchurch, the Control Room received a real 999 call to a car fire in Meadowcroft.
Had one of the crews been available, Buckinghamshire Fire & Rescue Service estimates its response time would have been five minutes quicker.
Fortunately no-one was injured as a result of the delay.
Case study 2
In 2006 a man who made hoax 999 calls to Buckinghamshire Fire & Rescue Service and Thames Valley Police was jailed for four months.
He pleaded guilty to 10 offences of making hoax calls - five to the police and five to the fire service. Six further offences - three hoax calls to each service - were taken into consideration.
Sentencing him, the magistrate said there was no other way of dealing with him than by imprisonment.
The magistrate added: “You have caused major inconveniences to the emergency services by making these hoax calls and could have put others in great danger.”