South Wales Fire and Rescue Service is 'going public' to catch out hoax callers as it launches a special campaign.  

Every year South Wales Fire and Rescue Service (SWFRS) attend nearly 600 hoax calls and 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, indicting that many of these calls are still be made by school children.

From January 1, 2010 to December 31, 2010 SWFRS took 2,151 hoax calls. 420 of these were challenged by Control staff and did not result in attendance by fire crews, 1,193 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.

Since January 1, 2011 SWFRS has taken 1,225 hoax calls. 334 of these were challenged by Control staff and did not 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.

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 August 16 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.

Andy Marles, Chief Fire Officer, SWFRS and Chairman, South Wales Fire and Rescue Authority, Cllr Anthony Ernest said in a joint statement: '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 firefighters 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'.

For more information visit: www.bloodonyourhands.co.uk 

 

Posted August 15, at 1615 by Andrew. Comment by emailing: andrew.lynch@pavpub.com