Plane down on Norfolk Suffolk border.

[Gadget Man]

Question: Should the person who reported this be charged with wasting police time?
Was it also an over reaction by the police and Fire brigades?

http://www.edp24.co.uk/news/police_say_ ... _1_4849647

[TankBuster]

(1) The person probably wont face any action unless the police can prove it was a malicious call.

(2) The caller could have mistakenly seen an aircraft which wasn't in trouble, but they could have thought it was. This type of call would be logged as a false alarm with good intent. No further action would be taken.

(3) The emergency services wouldn't have over reacted, they would have dispatched a pre-determined attendance for this type of incident. As no crash scene was initially found further resources may have been called upon to search a wider area.

It does seem a waste of resources, but the emergency services have procedures to follow when dealing with incidents & these procedures would have been followed. In this case, right up until the point that they could close down the incident by confirming it was a false alarm.


TankBuster

[Dave934]

I think the police should be charged with wasting police time !
ONE person phoned them and said something crashed....ONE PERSON. Near the A11. A road that has about a a million cars an hour on it !
Dave.

[TankBuster]

I think the police should be charged with wasting police time !
ONE person phoned them and said something crashed....ONE PERSON. Near the A11. A road that has about a a million cars an hour on it !
Dave.

True, a major incident like an aircraft crash would normally generate multiple emergency calls, especially if it occurred near a major highway. But having said that, it does only take one emergency call to get the ball rolling. Despatching one police car to a reported aircraft crash just isn't going to happen, even if only one call is received. The full pre-determined attendance will still have be mobilised as that's the procedure.

At the end of the day it all falls back to the information provided by the initial caller. If the caller says they saw a plane crash then the emergency services treat it as that and respond. A reduced response would only ever be sent if a caller made a pattern of repeated malicious calls & even in this case any calls would still require an attendance just incase it was the real thing.

TankBuster

[Al dunn]

I was travelling along the A1088 from Euston into Thetford on Saturday morning and I saw the said flare but thought it was something rondo with the numerous firing ranges around the Thetford area and thought nothing more of it until later in the day when I read the above article

[bizfreeq]

I think the police should be charged with wasting police time !
ONE person phoned them and said something crashed....ONE PERSON. Near the A11. A road that has about a a million cars an hour on it !
Dave.

And if it had turned out to be credible they'd have been ripped to pieces for their lack of response.

[TankBuster]

As the emergency services always say... "If in doubt, call us out"!

TankBuster

[Gadget Man]

Some interesting comments.
I put these questions to the wife. If you were driving along at 10 A. M. on a sat morning and thought you saw an aircraft going down, what would you do?
Her reply. “ Well I think I would try to see, if it really was a crash”.
Would you have phoned the police? “No because if it was a genuine crash, then there would have been someone closer to the crash who would have phoned”.

So I think this man was irresponsible for his actions, more so because he lived in Thetford, which is surrounded by military and civilian areas where air activity is a common occurrence.

The same for the police, with all the high tech they have today it should have only been a matter of minutes to determine that this was a genuine call out or not.
The Area in question Barnham cross roads. Not one person in the village reported anything, none from RAF Honington, none from outlying farms, not even are whisper from Lakenheath, Mildenhall or Norwich airport radar. But still they called for a full Calvary charge without any real idea where they were going.

Sorry Mark but your comment made me smile.
<And if it had turned out to be credible they'd have been ripped to pieces for their lack of response.>

If it had been a credible incident then you know full well, it would have been reported by loads of people so they would have known exactly where to go.
Not only that, but before their wheels had stopped turning, it would be up on every aviation site in the world with everyone claiming to know how it happened.

[bizfreeq]

I would have taken your 'sorry' if it hadn't been delivered in such a patronising way!

[lozza]

Some interesting comments.

Sorry Mark but your comment made me smile.
<And if it had turned out to be credible they'd have been ripped to pieces for their lack of response.>

If it had been a credible incident then you know full well, it would have been reported by loads of people so they would have known exactly where to go.

Whys that then ?, do you assume emergency services have some sort of device to guide them in to an exact location, made by a person possibly not familiar with the location, area, name and even maybe the road No their travelling on, but who maybe just happened to be the only one to have seen it.

So can I also assume your wife has a 4X4 to go off across fields to investigate, oh but hang on she doesn't have to as someone would have been closer why, very strange remark.

Mark is 100 % correct they needed to act on the info given, its better to be safe than sorry, years ago we were sent (Fire Service btw) to what someone said sounded like a helicopter in trouble, location very vague, weather not the best. This was a full turn out, Police Fire and Ambulance to what everyone thought would be a false alarm good intent, we were first to arrive to find a smashed burning helicopter with four deceased occupants, only one call was made to that incident.

[TankBuster]

False alarm good intent calls happen very frequently, not so much in the case of reported aircraft crashes but other types of incident. Speaking from experience it isn't uncommon to be tipped out to car fires that turn out to be nothing more than a bit of steam from an overheating engine. Nobody gets punished for wasting our time, they just weren't sure & thought it best to get it checked out.
Also, we often get called to incidents that are never located at all just like the one in the title of this thread. People may see smoke in the distance & call it in, but when the fire service arrive there's nothing to be seen. Also we've been called to RTC's which have never been located, this can just be a case of two cars having a knock & then a passer by sees it & calls the fire service, but in the meantime the cars have driven off after exchanging details & are long gone when the fire service arrives on scene.
These aren't malicious calls, somebody has genuinely believed they have seen an incident and made a call to report it. A full search has to be made of the area & the original caller can be re-contacted to clarify/confirm the location. Once the fire service are happy that there is nothing to be found then the incident will stop.
Yes it does use up resources, but it has to be treated as the real thing until proved otherwise.

I think the person who called in the Norfolk aircraft crash did exactly the right thing because that's what they believed they had seen & the services responded appropriately based on the information they had.
Job done, no question about it!

TankBuster

[Gadget Man]

Whys that then ?, do you assume emergency services have some sort of device to guide them in to an exact location, made by a person possibly not familiar with the location, area, name and even maybe the road No their travelling on, but who maybe just happened to be the only one to have seen it.

I don’t assume anything of the sort. They have, so have I and so have you.

So can I also assume your wife has a 4X4 to go off across fields to investigate, oh but hang on she doesn't have to as someone would have been closer why, very strange remark.

You assume wrong.
Her reply. “ Well I think I would try to see, if it really was a crash”.
Meaning that she would drive toward the spot where she thought it went down, to see if she could see anything else, like smoke and debris.
Would you have phoned the police? Meaning the time she first saw the incident happening
“No because if it was a genuine crash, then there would have been someone closer to the crash who would have phoned”. Which there would be on a Saturday morning at 10 am with weather clear as a bell.

Of course Mark is a 100 % correct they needed to act on the info given.
However in my opinion they didn’t evaluate the information correctly and over reacted on this occasion and wasted a lot of public money.

Next month or so, you will be all getting your council tax bills saying that had to go up because the emergency service can’t cope on their budget.

[TankBuster]

The emergency services do evaluate info correctly & they would have acted correctly in this instance on the information provided by the initial caller. The control operator would without doubt have questioned the caller to gather as much information as possible. For this type of incident, or any type of incident its an automatic despatch of the PDA. That's how the system works!

They wouldn't assume it wasn't a real incident just because they only received one call to it. That's not how it works! They can really only properly evaluate the situation once the emergency services personnel are on scene, at that point things can be scaled down if not all of the resources are required.

They did exactly what they thought was right on this occasion & there really shouldn't be any questions raised about it.
Its very easy to criticise when it turns out to be a false alarm, but on the flip side that caller could have saved lives.
If in doubt call the services out, after all its better to be safe than sorry!

TankBuster

[Gadget Man]

I have to disagree. There should be questions raised about this incident. There were 30 Emergency vehicles and unknown number of personal tied up with this incident, which should have been apparent in a short time that it was not a Major incident, as I have said above.
If procedures are not questioned and continually reviewed then they become outdated and inefficient and waste money.
This Caller COULD have caused more lives to be lost by calling the services to an incident, which he was not sure that even happened.

There is also another saying.
If in doubt keep your snout out.

[TankBuster]

I think its been explained enough in the above posts as to how & why the emergency services responded like they did.
Like it or not, that is currently how things are. And, yes procedures are frequently reviewed, so something may change in light of this incident, but I doubt very much that the original caller could ever be held accountable for it...unless it can be proved that they acted maliciously.

TankBuster

[gyvespa]

Unrelated but relevant.
Years ago, walking home from the pub at about 1am (friendly landlord) I found a man unconscious on the grass verge, a big bloke, not someone you'd want to tangle with.
I tried to wake him, no joy, just grumbling.
So I phoned the Police from a nearby phone box, why ?
Because it was Winter, he was in a short sleeve shirt and it was snowing, it was darn freezing and he'd have been dead by the morning..
I didn't hang around waiting for the Police to arrive just in case Johnny Drunkard got up and left but I kept an eye and checked that they did come.
Yes he may have gotten into trouble but at least he would be alive.
When you see something, you have to make a decision, act or ignore.

I've also been 'first' on scene at a major factory fire, a car fire next to a petrol station, two road accidents and had an elderly gentleman collapse whilst I was talking to him. You just deal with things ASAP, sometimes wrong choices might be made but that's for the professionals to decide.
At a recent First Aid talk, the emphasis was on getting help first then dealing with the casualty whilst they're on route.

It would appear that in the modern world that resources arrive in bulk. Why wouldn't they, they must have been available.
At a recent accident near my house, a minor shunt, there were 6 Police cars.
A few years ago, there was a Helicopter crash about 5 miles away, I can't even begin to estimate how many emergency vehicles went down the road that night.
Mistakes happen, you only have to look at the online incident page to see how many iffy call outs there are.
My greatest respect goes out to all the Emergency Services.

[jem60]

Two years ago, I was at Duxford on a normal day for my wife and granddaughter to have a flight in the Rapide there. Whilst waiting, a light aircraft had a very heavy landing, virtually a crash, much damage and 7 emergency vehicles turned up. Over the top was my first thought, but on reflection, a good thing to have an over response, and, apart from that, it was a darned good exercise for Emergency Services.

[Usernamegoeshere]

crazy waste of money ! the worlds gone mad

[britaylor]

Two years ago, I was at Duxford on a normal day for my wife and granddaughter to have a flight in the Rapide there. Whilst waiting, a light aircraft had a very heavy landing, virtually a crash, much damage and 7 emergency vehicles turned up. Over the top was my first thought, but on reflection, a good thing to have an over response, and, apart from that, it was a darned good exercise for Emergency Services.

Total agree a good and not planned exercise to both mil civil with all the aircraft and bases in east of Englahd

[ArabJazzie]

Gadget man,
I wonder if you picked up that Tankbuster appears to be writing from a position of knowledge and might just be in the emergency services. I know that Lozza is or was a Firefighter, not that i know him personally. The PDA, Pre-determined Attendance, is set after hours and hours of meetings to ensure that the correct response is sent to situations like this. There will be a meeting about this one, but i hope the PDA is not changed in the off chance that the next similar call will be another False Alarm - Good Intent.

In this case, i would rather someone did make the call and the crews had a few hours off station, rather than what Lozza describes above, and what i thankfully didnt get to not so long ago!
Arabest,
Geoff.