Firefighters spending a pretty penny on bathroom rescues
THOUSANDS of people a year are calling out firefighters to help them with bathroom mishaps, astonishing figures have revealed.
Most people simply reported getting locked in or being trapped.
In some cases, fire brigades are ‘rescuing’ people by ‘unlocking the door from the outside’.
The data was disclosed under Freedom of Information laws by 36 out of 52 UK police forces.
In the past three years, more than 12,000 call-outs involving bathrooms and toilets were recorded, says official data.
While bathroom fires and paramedics requiring assistance to reach patients were included in the figures, many people just called 999 because they had locked themselves in.
A number of the cases involved children playing with locks, while one child got lodged under a cubicle divider and another had their neck stuck in a toilet seat.
Some of the stranger cases included a man who got his testicles jammed in a toilet seat, a man who had trapped his head in his bathroom window, and a woman who got a finger caught in a toilet cistern.
On one occasion, firefighters were called to a home where a dog was locked in a bathroom.
Fire brigades also reported a number of incidents where obese people had got stuck or fallen over and specialist equipment was required to haul them out. This included a 24st man who got lodged in a bath and required a handsaw to cut him out.
While some of the calls were genuine emergencies, others could simple be solved by calling a locksmith, especially at a time when fire service budgets have already faced cuts.
Jonathan Isaby of the TaxPayers’ Alliance said: ‘People ought to understand that when they’re stuck in a bathroom, they need to call a locksmith.
‘The fire service exists to respond to real emergencies.’
A spokesman for London Fire Brigade, which reported the most incidents, said: ‘While firefighters are helping people get back into their homes, someone else could be trapped in a fire. If it’s obvious to our crews that it’s not an emergency, we won’t help.’