Occasionally, we get wildly inappropriate calls which are not your usual brand of timewaster but people who do not know where to turn and are using 999 as a kind of general helpline. I often wonder what makes them request ‘ambulance’ instead of ‘police’ or ‘fire’ - I guess it’s just that they see police as scary law enforcers and don’t want an entire engine full of firemen turning up, so ambulance is the only option left.
One such call came in this week, at around 8pm. It was from a woman in her 80s who was a carer for her disabled, bedbound sister, who was even older. The little old lady was very upset because the lightbulb in her sister’s bedroom had broken. Apparently, her sister was scared of the dark, never switched the light out and suffered from panic attacks. The caller wanted to know if we could arrange someone to come round and change the lightbulb. She’d pay, if necessary, she just couldn’t find anyone to do it. She had no nearby relatives, no carers, her neighbours were all equally elderly and she didn’t know what to do because her sister was getting more and more distressed by the minute. The call taker, quite rightly, told the caller that she was sorry but that she couldn’t help because we only deal in ambulances and not lightbulb changing people. She recorded all the details, including the address, on a ticket, which duly popped up on our screen as an “enquiry only”.
“Hmm,” said the allocator. “How many ambulances have we got sitting on station at the moment?”
“Three,” I counted. “One at Edmonton, one at Tottenham and one at Bounds Green.” (This is very unusual for 8pm; for some reason no one in North London fancied a trip to hospital that night.)
“And look,” said the allocator. “There’s H702 on their way back from hospital. They’re going to have to drive right past this lady’s house to get back to station. Mark, could you please call them up on the radio and ask them for a mobile number so I can speak to them in private?”
I got H702’s mobile number and the allocator rang the crew, who no doubt thought they were in trouble.
“Bit of an odd request here,” she began. “How are you at changing lightbulbs? Yes, lightbulbs. See, we’ve had this call… [she explained the call] and it’s just up the road. There’s a couple of vehicles on station so I doubt you are about to get a call, but if you do I’ll call you on this mobile number and you’ll have to drop the lightbulb and run.”
The allocator then rang back the old lady to tell her we had managed to find someone after all, but in future she would have to sort out a regular lightbulb changer as we wouldn’t do it again. Fortunately, no calls came in in that area and ten minutes later, H702 were back in their vehicle, leaving behind two very satisfied customers.
“After all,” said the allocator, “if I hadn’t sent them, she would be phoning in three hours later when her sister was in the midst of a panic attack. And that would take far longer to sort out. Prevention is better than cure, that’s what I say.”
