Hoax calls put emergency cases at risk

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HAMILTON - Emergency callers risk not being taken seriously because of a huge number of hoax calls.

Telecom, which relays the 111 calls, says the number of hoax calls is rising, and so are the chances of an operator cutting off a genuine call in the belief it is a hoax - or an error.

Almost 1.5 million 111 calls are made a year - and three in every four are false alarms or malicious.

Telecom operators are instructed to hang up if they believe a call is fake.

Service manager Nick Lee said cellphones had made the 111 call problem worse because owners who carried them in their pockets often pressed keys without realising.

"People ring up to be stupid, as a joke," Mr Lee said. "[But] when people muck around that increases the chance of a genuine situation being confused with a non-emergency."

Company phone systems that require callers to push different numbers for various services can also cause people to inadvertently call 111 on a redial.

A Telecom spokeswoman, Lisa-Marie Richan, said hoax and accidental calls were not logged separately but, with a third of New Zealanders now using mobiles, inadvertent 111 calls were rising. Listing 111 calls on phone bills had no effect, Ms Richan said.

Mr Lee said Telecom had consulted emergency services in a bid to find a way to cut fake calls, but apart from public education no solution had been found.

"There's no silver-bullet way of reducing the problem."

People who specified the service they wanted were put through, no questions asked, he said.

"The only dialogue that takes place is '111 emergency, what service would you like?'"

Police Inspector Peter Gibson said 70 per cent of calls to the northern communications centre were not emergencies.

"People ring us when they're mad, bad or drunk," he said. "[Some] ring us 10 to 20 times a night.

"A guy rang up and said an [automatic teller machine] had swallowed his card. He wanted police to get his card back."

Police prosecuted only about six people a year because most hoaxers and time-wasters were drunk or unstable.

"We have to weigh up the effort of sending a patrol around.

"We're wasting everybody's time if we put them through the courts. Sometimes we have to grin and bear it."

Caller-ID technology at the Auckland fire communications centre has reduced hoaxes from up to two a day to an average of two a week.

"School holidays [used to be] terrible," said Hamilton deputy chief Ron Wilson. "Children would walk the streets calling from phone boxes. You could just about follow their trail around the city."

St John Ambulance logged 17 hoax calls in August, 14 in October and nine in November-December. - NZPA