IMPACT OF A FALSE CALL VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Eric Smith (Fire Service): When we get turned out to a false alarm, not knowing it’s a false alarm at the start of the call, we’ve got resources, fire appliances and that, going to calls that are going to drag the people away, and the Fire Service resources, away from being available for genuine calls. And that’s the risk we have. The smaller the city, the smaller the town, the potential gets even higher because of course some of those towns have only got one fire appliance. We send it to a call that’s well away from the fire station or from the centre or nucleus of their township, and it takes a long time to bring them back to a genuine call. I remember a call not that long ago where we had a fire, it was a Northland town as it turns out, and the fire appliance was several Ks out of town, attending a call. On arrival, as it turned out, they had children playing with the phone and it was a false alarm. At the same time while they were out there the Communications Centre took calls for a house fire in their small town. We sent other appliances from other towns around their particular area, but we’re always going to be behind the eight ball because of the time it takes for them to get to their town. By the time we got there the house was fully involved and we ended up taking the occupant, or one of the occupants, away to hospital with burns that he’d received. If we’d have been more available (because we’d have been not attending this false alarm) we’d have been in a better position to deal with that incident and a lot prompter in arriving there.
Kathryn Caulfield (Ambulance): There is no tool that can detect a false 111 call if the caller has been very genuine in supplying the information for that call. So, there is a saying in the emergency services “If in doubt, send them out” – which we do. The vehicle could be responding to that false 111 call when a genuine emergency call comes in. Ultimately, someone could pay with their life.
Inspector Gary Hill (Police): Obviously time is the crucial factor that you’ve got to take into account when we’re dealing with emergency calls, and the sooner that someone rings in for a legitimate emergency, the sooner we can get there, process their call. Obviously it’s better to deal with them. If someone rings in with a false call it takes a lot of time and resources. A lot of the time we have to send Police units out to that address to actually physically check the address. Because that also includes a false call can be a hang up on us. And obviously we need to find out is the hang up legitimate, when there’s no-speech calls. So therefore by the time we get Police units out to that location and physically check the address to make sure everything’s fine, time is obviously the crucial factor. And legitimate calls, for example someone could be in a serious situation, such as a drowning, you’re only talking about a minute that you’ve got to work with obviously to get resources there. So time is a crucial factor and some of those false calls, non-speech emergency calls, that don’t require Police attendance, obviously take up a lot of our time and are very frustrating for us and for the staff answering the calls.
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