Halstead: Fire brigades spend hours on false alarm calls

5:34pm Wednesday 19th November 2008

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Three fire brigades have spent almost 200 hours responding to false alarms.

So far this year, Halstead fire fighters have received 99 false alarm calls which took them 39 hours and 54 minutes to deal with, a Freedom of Information request by the Halstead Gazette can reveal.

This compares to 223 false alarm calls in Braintree, which took fire fighters 92 hours and three minutes to deal with.

Witham fire fighters received 105 false alarm cause, which took 54 hours and 18 minutes to deal with.

A spokesman for the Essex County Fire and Rescue Service said: “If a member of the public believes that there is a fire then calling the fire service is absolutely the right thing to do.

“While we work hard to drive down the number of hoax calls we receive, we would not discourage anyone who genuinely believes there is a risk of fire from calling us straight away.”