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Daily Record
Daily Record
National
Stephen Bark

Over half of SFRS call outs to Rutherglen and Cambuslang last year were false alarms

More than half of incidents responded to by the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service in Rutherglen and Cambuslang last year were false alarms.

Both malicious and unintentional call outs made up 57 per cent of the 960 incidents fire fighters responded to between April 1, 2020 and March 31, 2021.

Station manager Alistair Stewart told the Rutherglen and Cambuslang area committee on Tuesday, May 10, that this was "a fraction above" the national average.

He said: "Between malicious false alarms and unintentional false alarms, that's 57 per cent of all our incident activity in Cambuslang and Rutherglen.

"That's about the national average. It's just a fraction, an absolute fraction, above the national average of 56 per cent."

In total, the fire service attended 554 false alarms in Rutherglen and Cambuslang over the last 12 months.

Despite a reduction on the previous year, Mr Stewart said the majority of malicious false alarms came from schools.

He added: "The numbers here, thankfully we have seen a sustained low figure.

"The primary and secondary schools here are where the issues are. That's where the most actuations actually happen.

"Having a point of contact within education is an absolute boon. We can further analyse and scrutinise a wee bit deeper.

"We need to make sure that everybody is fully sighted on what the issue is."

Unintentional false alarms also fell last year and the numbers coming from non-domestic properties are now at their lowest for five years.

Mr Stewart said: "There was a 16 per cent reduction and that is an excellent return.

"We carry out a massive amount of work to try and drive down these figures. They have been at their lowest for five years.

"Over a quarter of actuations occurred in care homes. That's not a particular surprise at the moment because the number of commercial premises open during COVID has been a lot less.

"They take up a lot of time and unwanted fire alarm signals equate to about 20 per cent of all of Cambuslang and Rutherglen's activity.

"We have local unintentional fire alarm signals champions. They place more scrutiny and they really drill down where the issues are.

"It allows us to be a bit more specific and target our interventions an awful lot better."

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