A hoax call can cost someone’s life
Think twice before making a hoax call to emergency services.
ER24 urges the public to refrain from making prank calls.
Last year they received more than 33 000 prank calls, ranging from reports of non-existent collisions to people being in ‘distress’ in remote locations.
According to Chitra Bodasing, spokesman for ER24, adults contributed significantly to the number of hoax calls received by contact centre agents.
Calls received are so realistic that paramedics only realised they were sent on a wild goose chase once on the ‘scene’.
Shakira Cassim, the ER24 contact centre manager, urges hoax callers to think about the consequences of their actions.
“Someone having a bit of fun can impact another person’s life,” she says.
“There are instances, especially over peak periods, where our vehicles are all over attending to real emergencies such as drowning incidents and collisions with multiple patients and attending to a hoax call means that we have a vehicle unavailable to attend to someone really in need.”
Cassim said that even though contingency plans are in place, these plans come with extra steps that need to be followed, thereby increasing the time taken to attend to an incident.
ER24 contact centre co-ordinator Santi van Heerden says hoax calls also impact the company financially and waste resources.
“If we dispatch an ambulance to an incident reported by a hoax caller and we have to service a real emergency in the area while all ambulances are out on calls, we have to either dispatch an ambulance from a different branch or send a service provider. This means loss of income and impact on resources,” said Van Heerden.
Consider yourself or a loved one not receiving urgent assistance in a life-threatening situation before making a hoax call.
Parents are also advised to teach children about the danger of making hoax calls.
