Have you got blood on your hands? Every second counts.
Fire and Rescue Service launches hoax calls campaign

South Wales Fire and Rescue Service is ‘going public’ to catch out hoax callers.  

Every year South Wales Fire and Rescue Service (SWFRS) attend nearly 600 hoax calls. The shocking fact is that a number of these 999 calls are made by adults. 

However, the number of hoax calls being made to the Fire and Rescue Service also increases during the Summer holiday period, indicating that many of these calls are still being made by school children.

Hoax calls, or ‘False Alarm Malicious’ calls as they are known in the Emergency Services, are a criminal offence and repeat offenders can be fined or even sentenced to prison.

From January 1st 2010 – 31st December 2010 SWFRS took 2151 hoax calls. 420 of these were challenged by Control staff and didn’t result in attendance by Fire Crews, 1193 were abandoned calls. However, of the 538 hoax calls which did result in an attendance by the Fire and Rescue Service 159 (30%) were made during the Summer holiday period (* 01/06/10 to 10/08/10).

Since January 1st 2011 SWFRS has taken 1225 hoax calls. 334 of these were challenged by Control staff and didn’t result in attendance by Fire Crews, 617 were abandoned calls. However, of the 274 hoax calls which did result in an attendance by the Fire and Rescue Service 83 (29%) were made during the Summer holiday period** (** 01/06/11 to 10/08/11)

As part of its ‘Blood on your hands’ campaign, SWFRS will be putting actual hoax calls made to the Service onto the campaign website and updating these every couple of weeks. From Tuesday 16th August people can log onto www.bloodonyourhands.co.uk to listen to the calls and find out more about the campaign. Anyone who logs on will also be able to watch a specially created short film which tells the story from a male adult hoax caller’s perspective.

To demonstrate how making a hoax call can ‘put blood on the hands’ of the hoax caller and put lives in danger, SWFRS will also be giving away ‘blood red’ liquid egg timers at the launch of the campaign taking place 12pm Tuesday 16th August 2011, St. David’s 2, Cardiff (located next to the Sky Stand outside of Debenhams).

The egg timers are to illustrate that for every second SWFRS is responding to a hoax call is a second that they are diverted away from responding to an actual incident and emergency – this could result in lost blood and lost lives.

Andy Marles, Chief Fire Officer, SWFRS and Chairman, South Wales Fire and Rescue Authority, Cllr Anthony Ernest said ; “

“Our highly trained Firefighters and Control Room Operators are here for the public in an emergency. However, people who make hoax calls tie up valuable time and skills that could be used elsewhere at real emergencies, where real lives may be at risk.”

“What surprises many people is that adults are guilty of making these calls, it is not just children ‘messing about’ in phone boxes. Our Control staff will challenge any callers who may seem suspicious, but some of these calls are indistinguishable as fake which means we send Fire-fighters to an incident which doesn’t exist.

“Making a call of this kind is a criminal offence and we have teamed up with Crimestoppers to urge anyone who knows any of the callers in the examples on our website to call them and report their information.”

According to figures quoted in the (then) ODPM (now CLG – Communities and Local Government) ‘The Economic Cost of Fire: estimates for 2004’ which was published in March 2006, the average cost of a hoax call to the economy is £1,970.

The campaign will run for several months, with fresh hoax calls posted onto the website every two weeks. Contact the Fire Crime Unit on 0800 7317287 to report suspected hoax callers.

To get your FREE liquid egg timer and to find out how hoax calls can cost lives and what you can do to stop them visit SWFRS personnel at their ‘blood on your hands’ stand between 9.30am – 8pm Tuesday 16th August, 2011, St. David’s 2, Cardiff.

*01/06/10 to 01/9/10
** 01/06/10 to 10/08/11