Emergency service at your service
A fire broke out on the corner of Swallow and Barbet roads recently, and although no one was hurt and no property damaged, residents claim to have received assistance only 45 minutes after phoning the Rynfield, Farrarmere and Benoni fire departments.
EMPD media liaison officer William Ntladi confirmed that a call was received through their call centre, besides the ones that residents claimed to have made to the fire stations as mentioned.
“Within nine minutes after the reception of the call, the first pump from Rynfield was on scene,” said Ntladi.
“A back-up pump was requested by the crew on scene, seeing that there was wind blowing and the risk was very high.”
The EMPD encourages people to use its call centre, in Bedfordview, to activate emergency services at any time of the day, throughout the week.
The call taking centre numbers are as follows:
· Ekurhuleni Emergency Number: (011) 458 0911 (paid line)
· National Emergency Number: 10177 (toll free line)
· Cellphone: 112 (toll free line).
Ntladi said that fire stations no longer have operational watch rooms.
“However, crews receive calls from the dispatching centres based in the three operational regions of the Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality,” he explained.
“Dispatching centres are based mainly in Springs eastern, Kempton Park northern and Alberton in the southern region.”
Ntladi explained that in case of an incident in the Rynfield area, the dispatching centre based in the northern region (Kempton Park) is the one posting Rynfield Fire Station, backed up by Farramere Fire Station.
“We would like to encourage communities to develop fire breaks in their residential areas, so that fire can be easily contained and extinguished,” added Ntladi.
