Cycling UK Forum

Mrs Mick F was a GPO telephonist many years ago, and she did her stint on the 999 suite back in Liverpool, also Southport and latterly Portsmouth. Times have changed in all of the telephony industry, and call centres are ever-present. 999 has a call centre too.

999 first put me through to chap in a Emergency call centre, he asked me what service I required, and he put me through to the Police call centre. I have no idea where either of these places were. The chap who put me through to the police read out my mobile number before I could speak further.

I explained the problem and tried to say where I was, knowing the police control lady I spoke to had little or no idea. She typed furiously during our conversation, and I knew I was being recorded.

I told the police that I'd been on the B road from Tavistock to Moretonhampstead and turned off into Princetown, and that I was about half a mile from the town. The lady read back what I'd said and asked me if she had it right.

That was it. She thanked me for the call and said that someone was on his way.

Since then, I heard that it was a false alarm. The van had broken down.

down here in the SW if you dial 999 you will most likely go through to BT in Bangor first and then transferred to your service of choice from there.

If you are calling the police in the Devon and Cornwall area, if you are in Cornwall you will go through to the centre in Plymouth (they also cover Plymouth, Tavistock, Princetown etc) and if you are in the rest of Devon you go through to the centre at force HQ in Exeter

As for the ambulance, SWAST are based in Exeter and cover, Somerset, Devon, Cornwall and the Isles of Silly, Dorset have their own control centre in St Leonards, just outside Bournmouth.

The ambulance service use a totally different calling system to the police, All the police need to know is where you are and briefly what has happened.

As an ambulance service we not only need to know where you are (and please if you do have to call really know where you are, map coords can only do so much do a good description of where you are helps) we also need you to hold on to answer questions about the accident.

We run a system here called Advanced Medical Priority Dispatch Systems (AMPDS) which is a telephone triage system. In short it asks a series of questions which determines the speed and kind of response we will send out. if the injuries are life threatening then we should be there in 8 minutes, if less so then 19 minutes and if not at all life threatening then up to 60 minutes.

With the 60 minute calls and some 19 minute calls we may pass them to one of the room clinical supervisors who can assess further and can give alternative care pathways if required without always needing to send an ambulance.

However when your out and about cycling or driving you will mostly come across RTCs which will on the whole generate a 19 minute response (and which the police will be informed of) the system also allows us to give some first aid advice, so if you are on a ride with a group of people and someone collapses we can talk through CPR if you need us to

the most important things we need to know are where you are, a summery of what the problem is and if the paitent is concious and breathing or not. Other questions are very useful to know the answer to as they give the crew a good idea of what's happening but arn't the end of the world if you arn't sure. but as I say just knowing the really important things are a must.

EMD_Nic wrote:All the police need to know is where you are and briefly what has happened.

I know nothing about the ambulance service, but a good police operator will try to find out a lot more than that to ensure that the response is appropriate. A pretty obvious case is where a vehicle is involved and has left the scene. Details can then be circulated immediately, without waiting for a report back from an officer attending. And so on. The very worst sort of operator is the one who gets no information, snarls 'I'll get somebody to attend' and then ends the call.

thirdcrank wrote:

EMD_Nic wrote:All the police need to know is where you are and briefly what has happened.

I know nothing about the ambulance service, but a good police operator will try to find out a lot more than that to ensure that the response is appropriate. A pretty obvious case is where a vehicle is involved and has left the scene. Details can then be circulated immediately, without waiting for a report back from an officer attending. And so on. The very worst sort of operator is the one who gets no information, snarls 'I'll get somebody to attend' and then ends the call.

Problem with the police systems (and they will admit this) is there is no national system, every force uses a different way of collecting the information.

Within the ambulance service we use an international protocol system which means the information is collected in the same way. There are slight variations in protocol from country to country to allow for the way triage is done in that country, but on the whole the system is the same which is why it seems to take alot longer to answer all the questions we ask.

However the cavat we always give is that our questions won't delay the ambulance because someone else is dispatching it.

Grampian Fire Service's control room wasn't too good when I called them out to a major fire on a neighbouring farm. As we live in a rural area with the same post code shared by houses that are off different roads and out of sight of each other, I'm careful to give very precise details, including OS grid references. In the case of the fire, I did just that and also told them the quickest route here from the post office in the nearest village.

Thirty minutes later I watched as the first appliance drove along a road on the opposite side of the valley—with no direct route between it and us. They could see us as by now the house roof had fallen in and there was a huge plume of smoke, but couldn't get to us. The next appliance, coming from another town, stopped at a farm about two miles from us and was turning back when a motorist, who'd driven past the fire, flagged them down and sent them in the right direction.

(The fire crews were good, I hasten to add, but the directions had not been passed to them.)

Police and ambulance control rooms are much better, and they always manage to get to the right spot. Of course, it does take quite a while for help to get here (20-30 minutes for an ambulance) so I've found myself treating RTA victims on my own for considerable periods of time.

My nightmare scenario is a bus crash on a windy night, in the rain. It almost happened a couple of years ago when a mini-bus full of drunken footballers came off the road on our bend. It went onto its side and slid, just missing trees and the gully. The footballers turned it back on its wheels and took off again, but a few feet either way and we and the neighbouring farmer would have had a right mess on our hands.

(By way of background, we get four or five crashes a year and there was a very nasty fatal in 2001.)

we had a car come round a corner in the middle of the road as it was goin too fast...it swerved to miss us and tipped on its roof then slid down the road. woman was unhurt just shocked

...all on the way to do my driving test too...

I dialled 999 a few years ago to report a burglary in progress. I was told no cars in the area. Nobody turned up.

Jim

When my next-door neighbour recently found that my house had been broken into and feared somebody might still be inside she rang 999 and then alerted another neighbour who is a police officer, not far off retirement.

He searched the house and they waited for the police outside. In due course, two PCSOs arrived by bicycle having been sent from Drighlington a couple of miles away. They were in something of a state from the ride (perhaps going "neenaw" takes the breath away.)

In spite of my neighbour immediately identifying himself to them they insisted that it should be done their way, which involved waiting for the real police. Had anybody still been there, they would have escaped across the fields at the back because they kept each other company at the front.



View from back of my house ( to cheer up a depressing post)

The most impressive response I ever had to a 999 call was when someone out of his head on some kind of drugs crashed in the road I used to live in. This was a one-way residential London street with parked cars each side.

The druggie, having crashed, attempted to turn the car around, hitting more cars as he did so. I asked my neighbour to dial 999 for the police while I went over, turned off the engine and removed the keys from the ignition. Within literally 2 mins, there was a police car blocking each end of the road, and shortly after that a third one at the scene.

Ben

We were heading south on the M1 last year when I became convinced a voice was asking me questions from the back seat. It turned out our one year old had got the mobile phone from his mother's handbag and had managed to hit the right keys for the emergency services. Their number overrides the pad lock facility we discovered.

As an auto response my wife turned off the connection but I insisted she call back as they may be tracking our signal down the motorway. They'd heard the baby noises and thought an adult might be sick but said not to worry about it.

Quite a big %age of 999s involve children messing with the phone. A couple of years ago a control room sergeant was dismissed for deciding to ignore what sounded like such a call and it turned out that the child was with a dead adult. I only read about that one in the papers but I am personally aware of a case in West Yorks where a 999 only involved heavy breathing. The call taker decided to send somebody to investigate and it turned out that a woman had committed suicide by soaking herslf in petrol and setting herself alight in the house. Her husband had tried to put out the flames and had inhaled fire.

It's a difficult situation for call takers and supervisors because there is not the manpower available to check out everything. I retired before mobiles really caught on but they must make things even moe difficult.

If you ever dial 999 by mistake always inform the operator. They will block you line otherwise. Had this happen to me by mistake once.

I've had to call 999 a few times.

Once to call an ambulance and the others to the London Fire Brigade.

The response I got from the Ambulance Crew was disgusting. I won't go into too many details but they did NOT rush to my house. When i flagged them off the main road to my house they just strolled up. They seemed to right off the illness as nothing major. Even thought the person was on the floor in absolute agony!! It was only when the person was examined in hospital that they said any further delay and she would have been dead.

My wife called the emergency services about a young person who had fallen on the hill opposite our house. It took the local ambulance 50 mins to make the 10 minute trip because they'd followed satnav which took them down every dirt track in the area.
It turned out okay in the end but she was unconscious all the time we waited.

A couple of years ago I found my mother lying helpless on her floor in a semi-conscious state and I thought she had had a stroke. Her speech was slurred and unintelligible. I rang 999 and the person talked me through what to do till the ambulance arrived. The only delay there was that Leeds City Council had not repaired the relevant street lamp so I was outside waving my arms about in the pitch dark.

My mother was incontinent of urine and one of the paramedics suggested that she probably had a urine infection. I now know that this can cause considerable confusion in the elderly. So she did not go to A & E but we got the out-of-hours doctors' deputising service. (More frantic arm waving to help them find us in the dark.) The doc., seemed not to have much idea but he accepted the paramedic's diagnosis and gave her antibiotics. Back on her feet by the following morning and I slept there for the duration of the course of antibiotics to make sure she remembered to take them.

My mother is now 88 and still lives independently so we are all eternally grateful to the lady paramedic. (Incidentally, the slurred speech was mainly caused by my mother removing and losing her false teeth in her confusion - I had never seen her without them before.)

I can't remember now if I used 999 or phoned my local nick directly but eitherway I got a couple of drunk pratts caught for jumping around on the brand new cars in the showroom carpark just down the road from me. Now I don't like cars but jumping from one roof to the next leaving massive dents and jumping on the bonets was a bit much. The Bill came round the next day and interviewed me even though they had caught them red handed.

There is also the option of using the Crimestoppers number (o8oo555111) which I keep in my phone - i think this is through some independent body and means you can do it anonomously.