The Fire Services Bureau (CB) announced that ambulances were sent out in 19,184 cases in the first half of the year, down 2.59 percent compared to the same period last year. However, residents were asked to refrain from calling out an ambulance for non-urgent cases.
Cheong Chi Wang, a senior firefighter, announced the bureau’s statistics for the first six months during a press conference at the CB headquarters in Nam Van.
The bureau said in a press conference in January that there had been an average annual increase of 6.5 percent in ambulance callouts in the past 10 years.
Cheong said that the bureau’s efforts to encourage residents not to abuse the city’s ambulance services has proven effective as ambulance callouts have decreased over the past six months.
According to the data released on Thursday, the number of ambulances sent out was up about 26 percent year on year. “The bureau has been dispatching ambulance motorcycles in addition to the customary ambulances due to a recent increase in the number of roadworks around the city,” Cheong noted.
The bureau recorded 458 fires, down by 15.5 percent compared to the same period last year. According to Cheong, the blazes were mainly caused by people forgetting to turn off their stoves, burning joss papers and negligence.
According to the data, firefighters were able to extinguish 76.64 percent of the fires without using a fire hose.
