This morning, a Triple 0 Emergency call was received detailing a mini bus had rolled off a mountain highway with 8 people inside at Clyde Mountain, 60km inland from Batemans Bay on the NSW South Coast. Media reports state that 3 Ambulances were sent by road and 2 Rescue helicopters were sent from Wollongong and Canberra to the scene. Although my source articles do not state this, Fire, Rescue & Police would have to be sent to the scene as well.
Having years of experience in an Communications Centre environment, I can understand what would have been happening this morning. At this stage as a calltaker or a dispatcher, once you have your units on the way, there is not much you can do until someone arrives on the scene. As this scene was relatively remote, there would be a delay in the first unit arriving on scene but until then, you are probably thinking the worst at this point. You are also hoping the the crews get there quickly and safely. Also, you are thinking about how are you going to fill the holes left by the crews that you have just sent out of town.
From my personal experience, time always seems to be going slower than it actually is, especially if there is a volunteer element added to the mix which is quite possible for the fire and rescue side of things. But in the meantime, of course, this isn’t likely to be the only incident happening especially if you are working in a big Comms Centre. Another factor that may go through your mind is the weather conditions. Most likely, you are in a remote centre with no view of the outside world so you have no idea of the outside conditions. Even if you did, the weather conditions at your centre might not be the same as at the incident site.
In this morning’s incident, the Ambulances arrived and drove up and down the road looking for the location of the accident. Often even with the best intentions, callers can’t often give you the best directions to an incident or they aren’t very precise. So the crews have to look very carefully in the general area of the call. Sometimes, there may be several calls to the same incident or sometimes you can call the original caller back to get more information. In this case, the original caller was not contactable and a supervisor recognised the caller’s voice or telephone number (the articles weren’t clear here) as a previous hoax caller.
As a dispatcher, you know that you will get some hoax calls or you will get some calls that are exaggerated. But you also know that sometimes a call will turn into something a lot bigger than initially reported. Of course, it is very difficult to tell a hoax call from a real call. Can you imagine taking a call, putting it down as a hoax, not doing anything about it and then having people seriously injured or dead with no assistance coming?
In one way I am glad that the call wasn’t real because it would have been a massive job to handle, not to mention the injuries and potential fatalities. But on the other hand calls like this also make me very angry to think that one person’s enjoyment leads to a massive waste of resources that could be used elsewhere.
In this case, the on site crews could not find an incident and the crews returned to their respective areas. The 2 rescue helicopters were also sent back to base before arriving on scene. The estimated cost of the dispatch of the ambulances and the two helicopters is around the $10K mark according to the articles. As I said earlier, the articles did not take into account the Fire, Rescue and Police resources which would not have been cheap either.
Investigations are contining into establishing the identity of the caller. If caught, the person faces a charge of public mischief which has a maximum penalty in NSW of a year in jail and/or a $5500 fine.
Sources: News Limited, Ninemsn
