After the Christmas rush, this week has been very quiet. Quiet, by the way, is a forbidden word in Nee Naw Control, because as soon as someone says it, something kicks off and all hell breaks loose. So there I was, feet on the desk, immersed in a leftover copy of Chat magazine (the no reading rule long forgotten), gently snoozing in my reclining chair, and someone must have said that word, because in an instant, the screen above our heads went from “10 call takers free; no calls waiting” to “No call takers free, 21 calls waiting”.
Uh oh. My first thought was: “BOMB!!” (even though on July 7th the increase in call rate wasn’t that sudden and I could count the number of calls about each bomb on my fingers). As the calls were answered, every single person had Angel Islington on their screens, and all the callers were reporting different aspects of the same incident:
“A man has been hit by a bus”
“The bus has hit Sainsbury’s!”
“There’s two taxis smashed up and pedestrians lying in the road everywhere”.
Piecing the bits together, we found what had happened was this — the bus had gone out of control ploughing into two taxis, two shops and umpteen pedestrians.
In the next two minutes, we received forty-three calls on the incident, which is the most I have ever seen. There must have been people standing next to each other with their mobile phones out ringing the ambulance.
Prior to this incident, the most calls I’ve ever noted about one thing was a horrible incident when an old lady was hit by a bus and dragged for a quarter of a mile under the wheels of a car — the car driver didn’t even notice because the lady was already on the ground when he hit her. Everyone down the route dialled 999, reporting the incident at its various stages. I got two calls out of the twenty; the first reported an elderly lady hit by a bus, the last a woman horribly injured under the wheels of a car. “I don’t know how old she is” said the caller “most of her face is missing”. Anyway…
Half the ambulance service was dispatched to Islington, so anyone who wanted an ambulance round those parts for the rest of the day had a bit of a wait, but fortunately no-one died in the incident. At least it woke us all up.
January 6th, 2006 at 3:37 pm
Ahh - I wondered what had happened! Was off to go get my weekly shop and got caught up in the aftermath.
Glad everyone was ok…
January 6th, 2006 at 5:27 pm
I just read the ITN article - and was rather amused to see an ad on the right for Sainsburys car insurance. lol
January 6th, 2006 at 9:02 pm
As a caller, it’s rather tricky to avoid jamming the lines in an incident like this. In the summer of 1999, I saw a guy hit by a car in central Bristol. Two first aiders rushed to help, and in the meantime I phoned 999, got through to the BT operator very fast, but was then put in a queue to speak to the folks at Nee Naw Control.
I was on hold in that queue for between 5 and 10 minutes, but I remembered being told in a first aid course never to hang up once you get placed in that queue, as the concern would be that you’d just been disconnected. Once I finally got through, I immediately said that it was ok, that several other people had already called for an ambulance, and I could now see one arriving down the road. I was told that, regardless of this, all the details had to be taken again, just in case. This seemed a terrible waste of time, given the size of the hold queue, and that there could have been other seriously injured people waiting to get through. Eeek.
Excellent blog Mark — I always enjoy reading your posts. Keep up the good work!
January 6th, 2006 at 9:49 pm
Better that three people call than no one I suppose….. although squillions of people phoning about a car accident blocking a baby who has stopped breathing is a nightmare.
First thing I do when I “discover” a scene is to ask has anyone called an ambulance? I then liase with whoever it is, Identify myself and check on the patient. In that way I know an ambulance has been called, nee naw control know I am there and hopefully no one will jam the lines.
I have also “discovered” a mini crashed into a tree, with the mini winning beyond a doubt, with sixteen people on scene and no one had called an ambulance or done anything for the twentysomething woman in the drivers seat slumped across the steering wheel with a bleeding head wound.
January 7th, 2006 at 12:21 am
Poor old duck. What a way to go.
Glad the bus ccident didn’t knock anyone off. Bus accidents in the city never seem to kill anyone. God knows why we worry about being hit by a bus.
January 7th, 2006 at 10:49 pm
It’s fortunate no one was killed in the bus accident.
Re: the Q word~ It seems medical personnel here (US) say the same thing (ie: saying quiet aloud during a slow work time will automatically bring more cases). Similar to the full moon brings more emergency cases tale.
January 8th, 2006 at 1:17 am
What IS IT with the full moon thing? The second we have a full moon, all the MHA’ers start calling.. and calling … and calling.
January 8th, 2006 at 7:31 am
Pft. The Q word isn’t just for medical personnel. I work at a service station on the highway, and whenever I say “It’s dead tonight”, I have to follow it with “Well, knock on wood!”
January 8th, 2006 at 8:13 pm
Stuart, you’ll be pleased to know that Nee Naw Control have changed the rule about triaging every single call and now if we get a call we already know about we say “thanks, got it already” or words to that effect. Only trouble with this is that if the first caller says “traffic accident, can’t see any more” and the second was going to tell you that the victim of the accident wasn’t breathing then you’ve missed a very important piece of information. But then again, if someone isn’t breathing, most callers will say so without prompting, and as you say, we need to get to those calls at the end of the crew which might be something serious that we don’t know about yet.
January 9th, 2006 at 5:30 pm
I said the Q word yesterday night and the call went from 0 to 9 waiting in a matter of seconds - bizarre!!
Got shouted at alot for that one!!
January 10th, 2006 at 8:43 am
Glad no one was hurt!
I once took a call for a female who had collapsed in her house. While i was one the phone with her daughter asking her questions i could hear someone else in the background answering the questions that my college was asking! And this pair were in the same room as each other sitting right next to each other! mind boggiling!
Mark, you are lucky that you guys no longer have to go thru the scrip with dup calls! We still have to go thru the whole thing for each call that comes in! Major pain when its a huge RTA or the like!
January 12th, 2006 at 3:43 am
Great to hear that at least not all Nee Naw Control centres triage duplicate calls nowadays — it was rather frustrating at the time, for both me and the chap at the other end of the phone!
January 12th, 2006 at 3:13 pm
Thought this article in the Guardian might be interesting to you and that you might want to email your post on Death to Demos http://society.guardian.co.uk/health/comment/0,7894,1683993,00.html
Claire
January 28th, 2006 at 2:47 am
The Joy of Overtime
So far this evening this position has been quite (dare I say it?) … Quiet. The odd problem youth or groups of youths causing Friday night problems, but nothing major. I’m sure, with the clubs kicking out in 15 minutes though, I’m going to eat my wo…
January 15th, 2007 at 1:45 pm
“And if a double decker bus, crashes into us, to die by your side, well the pleasure the privilage is mine.” Mosser