Around two-thirds of emergency calls false: Official

BURSA

Nearly two-thirds of calls made by people to helpline centers to report an emergency are either unfounded or not related to an emergency situation at all, an official has said.

More than 7.7 million calls were made to report an emergency to the 112 Emergency Call Center in the northwestern province of Bursa in a period of nearly three years, but approximately 66 percent of these reports were not related to an emergency.

Speaking to Demirören News Agency, Doğan Hüseyinoğlu, 112 Emergency Call Center manager in Bursa, asked the citizens to be more careful and urged them not to busy the lines unnecessarily.

“Our lines need to be constantly available when there is a threat to life safety, property safety and wetlands in the province so that notifications are processed timely,” Hüseyinoğlu said, stressing the importance of teams being able to reach the scene quickly.

“We have difficulty in intervening in real events when we set out for false reports,” he added.

While the most unfounded calls include reports about health appointments and municipal services, it has been stated that such phone calls were made mainly by drunk, mentally unstable citizens or children.

Among the calls made to health and safety institutions were some unique requests, such as locating a woman who left her house, finding a lost cell phone via its signal and requesting an ambulance for a sick cat.