KUCHING: The State Fire and Rescue Department (Bomba) received an average of five false calls monthly last year, and this figure is significant as the average in 2012 was 1.58 cases.
As the issue of false calls is very serious on several fronts, state Bomba director Nor Hisham Mohammad has appealed to the public not to make such calls.
To those who had good intentions in alerting Bomba to emergency situations, Nor Hisham advised them to be very certain of the situation before making the distress call.
He stressed that false cases would not only cost Bomba time and energy of its personnel, but would also affect operating cost.
Worst still, he added, if the reported scene of the emergency is far away from the fire station, it would put the public and properties under its jurisdiction under jeopardy should a genuine emergency unfolded.
“Assuming that we respond to a call where the scene is located some one-hour drive from the responding station but we ended up with nothing, the unit would still have to thoroughly check the site to confirm that nothing happened before going back.
“During that time, the particular station would have zero protection for its township (jurisdiction). If anything happens during that period, we will have a big problem. A fire may happen right in front of a fire station but we might be unable to do anything if all response teams have been deployed,” Nor Hisham told The Borneo Post when contacted yesterday.
He added that the rising number of false calls was cause for concern. There were 19 recorded cases in 2012, but the figure jumped to 60 last year.
Nor Hisham said this when asked to comment on media reports where Minister of Urban Wellbeing, Housing and Local Government Datuk Abdul Rahman Dahlan lamented that about 99 per cent of the 2.8 million emergency calls made each month nationwide are false.
The calls over 999 were either made by silent callers or mischievous children, Abdul Rahman told a press conference during his working visit to the Malaysia Emergency Response Services’ 999 (MERS 999) operation centre in Kuala Lumpur on Thursday.
Nor Hisham explained it was difficult to assess the genuineness of calls as they could either be made with good or bad intentions. MERS 999 would evaluate all calls before passing them to the respective emergency respond agencies.
Prank calls and hoaxes would immediately be handled by MERS.
“False calls are hard to determine because it always appears genuine. When the calls are transferred to the respective Bomba station, a respond unit would be sent out only for the team to end up with no incident to respond to when they reach the scene. These are what we deemed as false calls.”
Examples include accidents that do not exist, and the burning of garbage or land clearing being reported as fires.
Before the implementation of MERS 999, he said all prank and hoax calls made via land line would be given a call-back for report confirmation.
The number of calls was frustrating as it prevented genuine calls from getting through.
Following the introduction of MERS, the number of prank calls in the
state had dropped significantly, he said.