Dr David Macklin, executive director of operations at Yorkshire Ambulance Service, said: “Opening up our Emergency Operations Centre through Twitter is a great way of giving everyone an insight into what happens when you call 999”.
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The last-working Friday before Christmas, or “Mad Friday”, often sees revellers drinking for prolonged periods and results in a big increase in emergency calls.
And while demand wasn’t as high as the weekend before the number of calls was higher than an average Friday evening, with around 500 calls being taken between midnight and 7am on Saturday morning.
In total there were 1,159 calls across the region this year, and in 2014 there were 1,155 across the entire West Midlands.
The North West Ambulance Service is sending out a warning with last year seeing 12.5 per cent rise in overall calls on “Mad Friday” and a 20 per cent increase in life-threatening Red calls on “Mad Friday” compared to the previous year.
“Our ambulance crews are highly trained and skilled clinicians who provide life-saving and emergency medical care and should be treated as such”.
“As you would expect we saw a wide range of alcohol related incidents, ranging from people who had fallen over as they couldn’t stand up they were so drunk, to assaults, unconscious patients, and also drug related incidents from people who had taken so called “legal highs”.
PARTY-GOERS are urged to drink responsibly ahead of this week’s “Mad Friday”. While we were trying to explain to this caller why we couldn’t provide an ambulance on standby, someone was trying to get through. We have many cases of mild hyperthermia when people are out drinking – alcohol reduces your body temperature, so wear a coat and wear sensible shoes when going out and make arrangements to get home safely.
“The officers will be out and about to help keep people safe whilst they are having a good time”.
For some it will be a night to remember for all the wrong reasons.
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“If we’re trying to deal with things where people could have helped themselves, it does become very frustrating when we can’t get to the serious incidents that we need to be at”.
