Listening to something on the radio about ambulance services, I realised that I have never dialled 999. I have of course used police and A&E (never fire) services, but never considered them 'emergencies' requiring a call out. Then I read that 'frequent' 999 callers are defined as those who call 5 times a month, or 12 times in 3 months. WTF? I would have thought a lifetime quota of 5 would be more than enough, except for those with ongoing serious health conditions, who can be clearly identified. I'm sure Ninesy will have plenty of time wasting call out experiences. I am interested to see whether I am a freak in not using the service, and should be phoning up when QPR lose, I get a hangnail etc to get full taxpayer value. Hence the little poll. Non UK posters please substitute your relevant emergency number. Actually, please post them, might come in handy. I know it's 911 in the States.
I know I called 999 for an ambulance when my father was dying and I think I probably did on the three occasions we have been burgled, but only then because I didn't have a number for the local police. A burglary is not an emergency of course, unless the perpetrators are still on the premises.
As a follow up, just read that a woman in Northern Ireland called 999 to get a lift home in an ambulance from a hospital appointment. Apparently the average IQ (a very flawed measure I know) in the U.K. is 100, one of the highest averages in the western world. Without this woman and people like her we'd be top of the league. Every call has to be assessed as if it were a genuine life potentially life threatening situation.
I should make it clear that I don't expect people to share the circumstances of their calls, unless they really want to, which may be both personal and upsetting. An ambulance was called for my dad too Strolls, but sadly I wasn't there to do the calling.
In Norway we actually have three emergency numbers, one for each of fire, police or ambulance. I have never used any of them (thankfully). 110: Fire department 112: Police 113: Ambulance
I've used 112 for the Coastguard/Lifeboat when there was a boat in difficulty in Tramore Bay........ Think I used 999 once or twice in the UK and thankfully never here. Also it helps if your house alarm is monitored and you activate the panic buttons thereon to alert the Emergency Services via the monitoring company.....
I think that requires a level of understanding of what each of the emergency services actually do that we haven't quite achieved in the UK yet.
That woman's IQ may not be the problem, it could be 160 for all we know, her moral compass would be the issue in this case.
I call 999 and 112 probably 100 times a week, if not more!! When you call from a mobile, it generates a code to enable the emergency services to locate you if you are incapable of speaking - when we install new phone masts, or upgrade the equipment, we need to check these codes are working correctly, as the consequences of it being wrong are obvious. Each individual cell has to be checked, and this can be up to 30 cells on some of the newer builds, with 2g/3g/4g.
I voted 5 to 10 times. I have had a bit of bother in the taxi and I have needed the services of the Gardai. Mainly stroppy agressive drunks or people puking who refuse to pay the soilage charge of 140 euros. When I was a kid, I set the house on fire. Pretty serious fire too.
There was a recent series on the bbc about the London ambulance service - they had regular "nuisance" callers who'd call 50 times a day. Almost all psychie or dementia cases - and they always have to follow them through procedurally. Should still be on iplayer as it was a good documentary
I've called twice. Once when a car careered out of a side road and smashed into another car. No injuries, but the offending driver was clearly very drunk and he sloped off while we were seeing to the innocent driver who was shocked. It wasn't until I was called to give statement in the local police station that I learned the drunken driver was in fact an off duty copper. The other time was when a couple of thieves were trying to nick a car opposite my house, smashing the steering lock with sledge hammers. The car was saved, the thieves ran off.
No by accident. There was a power strike and my Mother left a candle on the landing so we had some light as we were going to bed. I couldn't find my pyjamas so I picked up the candle to search. I put the candle under the bed and next thing the mattress sparked. Within 10 seconds the whole bed was ablaze. Myself and my Sister got pots of water but that was like throwing petrol on the fire. We got out just in time then we realised the youngest aged 6 months was still inside. My 12 year old Brother ran back in and got her. Lucky.
I could quite comfortably write about 10 pages on time wasting calls Stan. One of the really odd things I never realised until I joined the fire brigade was this ... I had only been operational for about a month when we were returning to the station from a 'shout.' We were driving along Rochester Row in Victoria when we saw this man laying flat out on the pavement seemingly unconscious. We stopped and got all our medical gear off and radioed for an ambulance. We couldn't find nothing obvious that was wrong with him. All his vital signs appeared normal, pulse, skin colour, pupil dilation and no evidence of physical injury or drug/alcohol abuse. At no point did he regain consciousness and speak to us. Any way the ambulance turned up and took him away to St Thomas's Hospital. Later that afternoon we gave the hospital a ring to check on the man's condition so that we could finalise our report. It turned out that he had Munchausen Syndrome. I hadn't heard of it until this happened and throughout the rest of my career I had experienced it on at least another ten occasions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munchausen_syndrome
Phew! Both for the fortunate outcome and the fact that you weren't a juvenile arsonist! They'd never let you into the C and S again, at least not with a box of matches in your pocket
Wasn't there a tragic helicopter crash in Tramore killing Air Corps lads returning from an emergency call out? I think there was 4 killed. There is a memorial along the sea front.
