A FIRE BURNING THROUGH TWO TRUCK TRAILERS GENERATED more than 50,000 phone calls to emergency dispatch in West Sussex, England, late last night.

The two trailers were filled with 2,000 automobile tires and were parked in a secure lot at a recycling facility.  The fire generated a series of very loud ka-booms during the middle of the night and roused thousands of people from their sleep.

A spokesman for West Sussex Fire and Rescue Service said the noise was probably caused by the tires and the suspensions on the trailers exploding.   Initial suspicions are focusing on arson.

BBC News has the early REPORT.

WE ALL KNOW THE DRILL ….. if you’re lonely, call 9-1-1.  Or if you’re finger hurts.  In Albuquerque, New Mexico, tv station KOB did some background checking on these frivolous calls and ran this report yesterday:

You will agree that this story could have been filmed anywhere.  (Filmed?  Is anything filmed anymore? …Ed.  You know what I mean, wiseacre ….. FG)

IN THIS AGE OF CELLPHONES IT’S NOT UNUSUAL for calls to emergency dispatch centers to bounce in from outside their normal territory.  But in Cardiff, Wales, last week the dispatchers set their record for distance-dispatching.

While they’re used to getting requests for service from all around the UK, this time they had an emergency call for ambulance service in Nevada, USA.

The Welsh Ambulance Service dispatch crew
that tracked down the Nevada ambulance.

Kerry Burrows took a 999 call from a desparate father-to-be who was in Wales talking to his girlfriend in the U.S. on an internet phone connection.  Pregnant with expected twins, she suddenly took ill while they were chatting.  But with no regular phone in her home, she was unable to place a 911 call for an ambulance.

He boyfriend explained the situation to Burrows  and then the crew swung into action.  Being completely unfamiliar with the layout of the U.  S., they didn’t know how to reach the ambulance service for the woman’s area in Nevada.  So they tried calling an International phone operator, but she thought it was a hoax call and blew them off.

But they persevered and eventually got through to the right place and the ambulance successfully made it to the woman’s aid.

The Mirror has the details of how they did it HERE.

FIVE SIMULTANEOUS FIRES IN THE SAME NEIGHBORHOOD, one causing a fatality, Thursday morning overwhelmed the Vancouver, British Columbia, dispatchers and presented a challenge to the fire department.

At approx. 5:15 am reports started coming in from five locations in the same part of town in a pattern typical of criminal-intent diversionary fires.  The first was set in a portable toilet, the second in a pile of trash on another street, then a third fire in a hedge not far away.  As units started responding, a house under construction went ablaze.  As this was happening, a fire was set in the rear of an occupied house where a 68-yr.-old woman lived with her son and daughter-in-law. 

This Vancouver Sun photo shows the rear
of the house where the fifth fire was set.

Along with the multiple calls coming in to report the several fires, this fifth one hit the limits of the dispatch center.  The Vancouver Sun reports:

A woman who called 911 to report a fatal house fire Thursday in southeast Vancouver says she was told to hold the line several times because fire crews were busy dealing with four other blazes in the neighbourhood.

“She said to me that they’re all busy and to hold the line,” Janice Adachi said of her conversation with an emergency operator. “She told me that three or four times.”

The fifth and final fire appears to have been the target all along.  The younger couple escaped the burning house, but the mother was trapped in her basement apartment.  He son tried to pull her out through a window, but was unable to do so.  Firefighters were eventually able to carry her out, still alive, but she died later in the hospital from her injuries.

The Vancouver police are treating the case as a homicide.

Metro Vancouver has MORE.

EVERYBODY GETS THEM.  MOST OF US HAVE HEARD THEM.  We’re talking about those ridiculous 9-1-1 calls that come in from hopelessly helpless  people who cannot handle life’s normal daily occurrences.

The Valley Emergency Call Center in the Salt Lake City, Utah, area is trying to get people to stop and think first before they tie up an emergency call-taker with a frivolous request.

TV station KSL Channel 5 recently ran this news story illustrating some of the more outrageous calls that have come in to the VECC recently:

You can also listen to a more extensive audio of more calls and the complete 3-minute “cricket-cide” call HERE.

A DALLAS, TEXAS MAN HAS BEEN ARRESTED AFTER MAKING LITERALLY HUNDREDS of hoax 9-1-1 calls to the Dallas emergency center.

The 31-yr.-old man has been on a campaign of harassment against his family members because of several perceived acts against him.  He claims, for example, that his sister posted several nude pictures of him on the internet.  His family says that he is on medication for a schizophrenic mental condition.  He denies that he is crazy and says that the fire marshals are just picking on him because they don’t want to properly investigate the false alarms.

He has allegedly been phoning in false calls to both police and fire for more than a year, but they have been subtle enough that there was never a suspicion that they were prank calls when they were received at the dispatch center.

When he finally came under suspicion, investigators traced back 235 hoax calls just since this past April.  It took them three days to find him for an arrest because he went into hiding.  They found him after he called in three false alarms in one day on Aug. 4.

The Dallas Morning News has all the details and full STORY.

THE VALENCIA COUNTY, NEW MEXICO, EMERGENCY DISPATCH CENTER has been shunted to the end of the line so often that the dispatchers there are reaching the breaking point.

Not only have they long outgrown the alloted space that they work in, but the always-increasing workload has become larger than the existing squad can handle effectively.  The cramped quarters are so burdened that they are using the bathroom as a storage area.  With the higher volume of activity, the clerks are getting stressed and showing signs of fatigue and using sick leave more frequently.  On the average, they are working 60 hours a week.

The County refuses to budget the funds for expansion and personnel growth because they claim that the money is not there unless they raise taxes (heard that before?).

There is a proposal now that will be on the November ballot to increase the business gross receipts tax by .25%.  They expect that to increase revenues by $2 million a year that will be dedicated to the dispatch center.  (We’ve heard that before, too.)

KOB-TV Ch. 4, Albuquerque, ran this video report:

TUSCALOOSA COUNTY, ALABAMA, OFFICIALS ARE PROMISING TO MAKE CHANGES to the way that emergency medical calls are dispatched in the county.

This past Saturday Firegeezer reported HERE on the sad incident where a teen-age boy had seizures and subsequently died when some EMT’s who were less than a mile away were never notified.  The current 911 system calls for the dispatch to be routed through as many as four different agencies, one of them in another state, before the nearest unit is dispatched.

On the incident in question the fourth leg of the dispatching circuit went to the wrong agency.  The Tuscaloosa News reports:

(Carrolls Creek VFD Chief Tom Clarke) says that he’s filed five reports in the last few months with the Tuscaloosa County 911 district about not being notified when calls have originated from their service area.  

Clarke has filed complaints with the 911 board for years about delayed responses to fires and medical emergencies because volunteers aren’t notified quickly enough. In 2006, he told The Tuscaloosa News that ‘we’ve been dealing with this for years. Somewhere down the line, we’re going to lose a life.’

Rod Coleman, the 911 coordinator for Tuscaloosa County said that he has received 11 complaints this year from volunteer departments. Most of them stemmed from similar situations when volunteer departments were not notified when calls came in.

Now that the predicted life loss has occurred, the politicians are belatedly starting to find a way to correct the problem.  County Commissioner Don Wallace and City Mayor Walt Maddox have both initiated actions to seek a solution.

Read the full story in the News HERE.

Hat tip: G. W.

A SEVERE THUNDERSTORM IN NASHUA, NEW HAMPSHIRE, SUNDAY EVENING sent a lightning bolt onto a direct hit at the fire department’s radio and dispatch center.

The NashuaTelegraph reports:

A lighting strike damaged the fire department’s radio dispatch system during yesterday’s severe thunderstorm.

The strike hit the dispatch center at 38 Lake St. sometime between 5:30 and 5:45 p.m. said Deputy Fire Chief Micheal O’Brien.

The dispatchers were able to bring the backup radio systems online within five minutes. The backup systems were still in use as of 10:30 p.m. on Sunday night.

The damage will not affect service to residents, O’Brien said.

So far there is not estimate on the cost of repairing the system which is still underway.

Nashua Fire Rescue WEBSITE.

TUSCALOOSA COUNTY, ALABAMA, EMERGENCY OFFICIALS admit that there was a major delay in a medical dispatch that could have been a factor in a teen’s death Thursday night.

The county’s emergency medical calls are handled by American Medical Response ambulances stationed in the city of Tuscaloosa and the rural VFD’s are also sent as 1st responders to treat the victim until the ambulance arrives.  But on Thursday night the system failed.

When the parents of a 15-yr.-old boy who was having a seizure called 911, they were routed to the Tuscaloosa Police Dept.  The PD then called AMR’s dispatcher who is located in another state, Biloxi, Mississippi.  That dispatcher then sent the ambulance to the address which was at least 10 minutes away.

After dispatching the ambulance, AMR was supposed to relay the call to the county Sheriff’s Office who would then dispatch the nearest VFD.  In this instance, volunteer EMT’s from the Carroll’s Creek VFD equipped with medical supplies were within a mile of the victim.  But the call to the sheriff was never made.  Instead, AMR sent the dispatch to the Tuscaloosa Fire & Rescue who responded on the call.

The result after all this roundabout was not good and an investigation is underway.

The Tuscaloosa News has the complete, yet confusing, story HERE.

Firegeezer wonders:  What kind of system routes calls through four dispatch centers in two states before the full dispatch is completed?  It’s no wonder that the call got dropped.  I wonder if this has happened before, but nobody knew about it until someone finally died as a result?