By Ben Goldby
The Sunday Mercury
BIRMINGHAM, U.K. — Paramedics had to respond to a record number of 999 calls on New Year’s Eve.
West Midlands Ambulance service also had to deal with a host of hoax problems, including one from a reveller whose friend was “refusing to drink”.
In the first three hours of 2010, a staggering 1,269 people called for an ambulance, mostly for alcohol-related injuries including drinkers collapsing, falling over and getting into fights.
A string of bogus calls left paramedics red faced as revellers came up with some bizarre excuses for needing an ambulance.
Just after midnight the ambulance service was called to a flat in Rowley Regis after a drinker said his pal “has refused a drink, which is not like him. He is ill.”
A man from Erdington, Birmingham, called claiming to have a hand injury and concussion, but when an ambulance arrived it transpired that the “patient” wanted help because he was locked out of his house.
At around 4am on New Year’s Day, the ambulance service was called by two men in Shipston on Stour, Warwickshire. They said they had dialled 999 while walking home, because they were too cold and couldn’t get a taxi to take them home.
Despite the hoax calls, ambulance crews had to respond to dozens of car crashes and life threatening injuries.
Crews also saved the lives of two people who suffered severe heart attacks. A man in his 40s was given CPR by his family before being rescued by paramedics with a defribrillator in Wolverhampton at 7pm on New Year’s Eve.
At around 11.20pm the same team who rescued him resuscitated a woman, also in her 40s, after she collapsed at her home in Walsall.
Drunken Drunken party-goers in the region’s city centres also kept medics busy over New Year. Health bosses were even forced to set up temporary Minor Injury Units in Broad Street Birmingham, Solihull town centre and Dudley. West Midlands Ambulance service chief executive Anthony Marsh said: “The way in which the Service dealt with the very significant increase in the number of 999 calls is a tribute to all the officers and staff of West Midlands Ambulance Service. “The public should be very proud of all the staff and volunteers who have given up their night to ensure the safety of everyone who spent the night celebrating the coming of the New Year.”
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