'Lives will be lost' if hoax calls continue

Police in Northern Ireland have warned that "lives will be lost" if there is a repetition of the hoax calls and petrol bomb attacks on emergency service vehicles that occurred last night.

Within hours of the 6pm walk out by FBU members, a police car and Yellow Goddess fire tenders, manned by army personnel, were attacked by a gang of up to 70 youths in Hazlebank in Londonderry. The call turned out to be a hoax.

The gang attacked the emergency vehicles with stones and up to eight petrol bombs were thrown. Police were also petrol-bombed in the Galliagh area of the city. There were no reports of any injuries.

Sinn Fein's Mary Nellis said the behaviour was "totally irresponsible" and appealed for parents to keep their children off the streets: "The only way we can ensure that it does not happen again is for parents to exercise their responsibility, politicians to do all we can, and for young people to stop their childish activity."

Emergency cover attended 24 significant fires overnight, and of the 200 call outs received by midday today, 93 were hoaxes and only 34 proved to be genuine emergency calls.

Hoax and arson incidents, which hampered the work of fire teams here, were common across the UK. It has been revealed that 240 fires were started deliberately across the UK last night and the volume of hoax calls was estimated at around a third of all emergency call outs.

Police say they would be investigating all the hoax calls and said were treating the offence "very seriously".

Assistant Chief Constable Duncan McCausland said: "The key message is that people should not make these [hoax] calls… because if a fire tender is diverted somewhere else those few precious minutes which could be lost, could mean the loss of life."

He added: "They are putting the lives of their friends their neighbours in their own community at risk by hampering our vehicles and the yellow goddesses arriving at the scene of fires."

Contingency arrangements in the province consist of 32 Yellow Goddesses, along with 19 breathing apparatus response teams and one heavy-cutting team deployed at 15 locations across the north. All call-outs are led by a PSNI vehicle.

Across the UK last night, there were 19,000 armed forces personnel, nearly 400 specialist teams and 827 Green Goddesses on standby to replace the 50,000 firefighters who walked out last night.

The current strike ends at 6pm Friday. The next strike though will be a sterner test of the government's contingency plans as it will last for eight days and is set for November 22.

(GMcG)