Firefighters in Burton has issued an urgent warning after being blighted by hoax calls.

They have joined colleagues at Staffordshire Fire and Rescue Service is urging people to stop making the 'dangerous' calls after Staffordshire received 22 malicious calls in June alone.

The false alarms put lives at risk, says fire service prevent manager Carmel Warren. She said they are “a huge waste of time”.

One hoax caller reported that there was a fire in the kitchen of a house


She said: “When someone makes a fake call to fire control there is no way for us to know it is not a genuine call until the crew arrive at the scene. This means that a crew are sent out no matter what and sometimes more than one pump may be assigned depending on the claims the caller makes.

“This results in a huge waste of time and resources attending these fake incidents and prevents firefighters responding to other calls where someone might genuinely be in trouble. It also takes added time for firefighters to properly check the area to ensure there is no signs of fire or any other incidents.

One caller reported that there was a fire in the kitchen of a home and three crews were sent to the “incident” only to find there was nothing there. This call came from the same phone box as several other hoax calls.

Staffordshire Fire and Rescue Service has received 22 hoax calls in June

The problem is also risking services in Derbyshire after the Burton Mail reported in January that the number of hoaxers making 999 calls about non-existent fires had risen in the county for the first time in nine years.

Data from the Home Office showed that firefighters attended 70 malicious false alarms in the county in the 12 months to the end of March, at an estimated cost to local taxpayers of almost £65,000. This was compared to just 56 in the previous financial year.

But the number attended by the fire service would be much higher if it was not for 999 call handlers challenging would-be hoaxers, it has been revealed.

That is because the figures show that there were another 281 malicious calls in 2015-16, which call handlers successfully deemed as being false and therefore no crews were sent.

Hoax calls are plaguing the emergency services

A malicious false alarm happens when a 999 call is made to report a fire, or where an alarm is triggered, when the person doing it knows that there is no actual fire.

While false fire alarms may sound like nothing more than an inconvenience, the government estimates that they cost the UK economy around £1bn each year, as well as diverting resources away from genuine emergencies, and putting other road users at risk.

They also cost the local taxpayer, with each malicious call costing around £910, according to Department for Communities and Local Government guidance.

Carmel added: “Please only call the service when there is a genuine need for our assistance.

“We take calls of this nature very seriously and will not hesitate to take legal action against those found to be responsible for such calls.”

Some of the more bizarre calls to ambulance crews covering Burton and South Derbyshire

Some of the calls made to ambulance crews are hard to believe, from pranks to the downright ludicrous, as handlers already make their way through thousands of calls a day. Ambulance crews in the East Midlands have previous released some of the more bizarre calls the handlers have had to deals with.

The list of the 10 most ridiculous calls, which were obtained via a Freedom of Information request, show that people have called up asking for advice for a host of reasons, including:

  • A person who had popcorn being stuck in between their teeth;
  • A patient wanting to be carried upstairs because their stair lift was broken;
  • Someone whose milk had gone past its sell-by date;
  • A woman who was late having a period;
  • A broken finger nail, which had been swallowed and concern was raised as to whether the patient would choke;
  • A hamster that had bitten somebody's finger;
  • Someone who had dropped their keys down a drain;
  • A person who was concerned because there was a dead cat outside their house;
  • A moth was in a patient's ear; and
  • One patient called 999 because they had a broken toe nail.

In addition, the service also revealed that they had been called out six times to incidents of people who had been locked in toilets or bathrooms.

West Midlands Ambulance Service, which provides emergency cover for Burton, also released a list of hoax calls last year. These included one person who called up because they had seen a 'scary hedgehog', and another who complained they had 'lost their keys'.