I'm not angry at the public - just stating that what some tell emergency services about what is happening, is quite different to the situation occurrung.
Occasionally it is malicious / mischievous, but more often it is because they have only had a quick glance at the situation as they drive past, and report what they see - which is only a very small part of the incident....or in a panic over the situation, and can't tell you much about what is actually occurring, or they get second hand info, to ring through to the emergency service, without actually being there.
If we talk specifically about road crashes, there was one recently, a single car vs pole, one occupant, trapped and DOA.
There were at last 5 different callers who rang in, and got 5 different versions of the crash. One said there were 2 cars, 5 people trapped, 2 dead, one really bad, and that the cars had been drag racing. Another said two trapped, several cars involved.
It was all the same crash. The other cars supposedly in the crash were passersby who had stopped to assist (and hadn't crashed at all). The 5 people supposedly trapped where the passersby who were trying to help, and had not been involved in the crash. There had been no drag race.
People's perceptions vary, depending on a wide range of factors, and reasons. In this case, it appeared that SAPol and SAAS took the information based on the worst case scenario, and sent appropriate resources based on that information (I guess MFS did, but their pager messages don't show, so I can only assume they also responded appropriately - no reason to suggest they didn't)
While you have to go with what people tell you, until emergency services arrive to assess, you have to carefully consider what the public tell you, and put appropriate procedures in place to take into account the information you receive. Hence part of why we have SOP's!
Pip
