Last year, about twenty operators of the Directorate for Emergency Situations answered 151.115 calls to the number 112, in an average of 5,2 seconds, and they sent competent services 8.055 times in rescue operations.
However, there are also citizens who do not call the number to save themselves from emergency situations or trouble, but to hide the accident from their husbands, repair their SIM card, complain about violated consumer rights...
Individuals abused the willingness of the rescuers to risk their lives, in order to save theirs, inventing various problems so that the helicopter would not come to pick them up because they were late home.
In anticipation of the Day of 112 services, which is celebrated on February 11, "Vijesti" reporters spoke with the head of the Service and operators whose job it is to hire the services as quickly as possible.
"The number 112 was designed in 1991 in the European Union, in order to make it easier for tourists traveling through various countries not to remember local numbers, but to have one, on which, if they need an emergency service, they will get the necessary information. By decision of the Agency for Electronic Telecommunications, Montenegro introduced the number 2008 in 112 and it was assigned to the Directorate for Emergency Situations, i.e. to the then Sector of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Seven years later - on October 2, 2015, we put the Erikson system into operation with a briefcase, we are still working on that system today and it covers the territory of the entire Montenegro", explains the head of Directorate 112 of the operational and communication center, Danilo Miljević.
Always available
Although they are regionally divided into three centers, the operators work within one system and there is no possibility that no one answers the number 112, no matter where the caller is calling from.
"The center in Bijelo Polje covers the northern region, the center in Bar covers the southern region, and Podgorica covers the central region. Callers, when calling from the territory of northern municipalities, if all the operators are busy in Bijelo Polje, someone from Podgorica or Bar will answer, it depends who is free, but there is no difference, because the caller will get the service he needs in the territory of the municipality on which it is located", explains Miljević.
The operators of the Podgorica 112 center showed the reporters of "Vijesti" how it looks in practice - if they see on the monitor in front of them that the phone of their colleagues in Bijelo Polje or Bar is hot, they pick up the calls.
When they pick up the phone, the system recognizes the location of the caller, which makes it easier for them to engage other services while they are talking - Ambulance, police, rescuers, firefighters...
The phone rang.
The shift leader, Aleksandra Lakić, answered the call and the location of the man who reported that a man had collapsed on the street and that it was necessary to send doctors as soon as possible was shown in front of her. The call came from Sutomore and in less than a minute the Bar Emergency Service headed towards them.
"In order not to waste time, I connected them to the emergency room from Bar and stayed on the line until the conversation was over," she said.
He explains that the system, which recognizes the caller's location based on base stations, makes it easier for them to send the really competent service. The accuracy of the locator in that case was 60 meters in diameter.
Miljević said that this is a standard procedure, but that operators can join the conversation if necessary, or make a conference call if it is necessary to engage several services at once.
The system contains all the numbers of municipal services, and the operator needs one click to connect the one who needs help with the one who will provide it.
"In the event of a serious traffic accident, the standard procedure is to connect all competent services via a conference call," explains Miljević.
Apart from the location, the system shows to whom the number is registered and there are no protected numbers.
I 112 122
Although they were "mixed up" at first, citizens increasingly distinguish between calling 112 and 122.
"By calling 122, you get a service that is responsible only for issues related to the work of the Police Administration... and we are responsible for the entire protection and rescue system. By calling the number 112, you can also get the Police Directorate, protection and rescue services, emergency medical assistance or any other professional or urgent service that is necessary. Rescues in the mountains are under the jurisdiction of the Directorate for Emergency Situations. We have a contract with the Mountain Rescue Service, which in certain cases, at our request, goes out and carries out search and rescue operations... Our Center engages divers from Bijela, an air-helicopter unit... So, in searches when we have drowned people, the service protection on whose territory this is happening submits a request to us, which we immediately process and hire divers", says Miljević.
He says that the 112 Service has positioned itself well since 2015 and that the results of its work are evident:
"Although, I like to say that this service is best when it's not working. When there are no calls, it means that everything is calm and there is nothing happening. However, the number of calls increases every year, because the awareness of our citizens about the number 112 is also increasing".
Operators speak several foreign languages, which enables them to provide adequate assistance to everyone, especially during the busy tourist season, when the number of calls increases.
Various services engaged in 8.055 actions
During the last year, 112 actions were organized through the number 8.055: "We engaged various services... We coordinated 40 search and rescue actions in the mountains, in which 83 people were saved, of which 74 were foreigners. In these actions, we mainly engaged the GSS, which carried out actions in the field. We have been cooperating with them since the establishment of the center. In certain cases, due to the inaccessibility of the terrain, our air helicopter unit, which is part of our system, was engaged," Miljević said.
He also explains that it does not depend on the operators who answered more than 5,2 thousand calls in an average of 150 seconds, how quickly the action will be implemented.
"It depends on the readiness of the protection services or those who engage, but every action was implemented very quickly."
In addition to the fact that the call to the number 112 is free and OKC can be reached even from locations where there is no signal, the Directorate does not charge for rescue services, even when the GSS and air-helicopter unit are engaged.
"Everything is free with us... Such is the attitude of our country. There were attempts to create a regulation, especially for the engagement of air-helicopters, but it ended in an attempt," Miljević explained.
Locating in eight meters soon
The 112 center expects to improve its service this year, and this will mean greater accuracy in locating the person who needs help.
"Currently, the location is not satisfactory, but we are managing. We are planning to develop two new services - investment, renewal and upgrade of the system and the service of automatic mobile application. Through smartphones and in cooperation with Google, locating will be within eight meters. This will make it easier for us to send the protection service to the right place, because now it can happen that the caller is on one side of the mountain, and the location shows the other. This improvement is very important for rescue in the mountains", said Miljević.
He also announced the e-call service, which modern vehicles include:
"In the event of an accident, the location and data on the type of car, where the accident occurred, are sent via that service, and there is also the possibility of making a voice call from the car. It has already taken root in the European Union as an obligation. Every year we send reports to the European Emergency Agency (ENA) and information about our system. They kept asking the question: 'Will you introduce that service?', and we answered that we would. Now the question was - 'when'? I hope we will do it by the end of the year and complete the story of number 112".
The operators of this service speak Russian, English, Spanish, Italian, Albanian...
"Even though we don't set up a conference call on a shift, we even had a case of an elderly gentleman from Israel who didn't even know English. We put him in touch with the Israeli embassy to find out that he got lost somewhere in the mountains," says Miljević.
He explains that the 112 system is expensive, that technological development must be constantly monitored, but also that the state listens:
"Perhaps we should increase our personnel a bit. In the center in Podgorica, we also have international communication, we cooperate with the Euro-Atlantic Center for Emergency Situations and the European Center for Emergency Situations, an EU mechanism. We cooperate with those two centers from Brussels, and when there are extraordinary events, all international communication goes through this center".
Children called thousands of times playing with old phones
Miljević explains that at one time it was a problem for those who did not have a SIM card in their phone to get the number 112.
"We allowed that option for six months, and then, in agreement with the Agency for Electronic Communications, we asked for it to be turned off. The idea was to put up with a million calls if one of them was important and if we were going to save one life. However, in six months the number of calls increased from 12.000 a month to 30.000 and none were for the benefit of the service. The calls were mostly made by children who were playing with old phones."
He emphasizes that all conversations are recorded and, by law, are kept for three years:
“It's significant because it protects our officers. When a man from Poland started a fire in Bar, he said that the officers of 112 taught him to start a fire... He even wrote to the president of Poland and told him that, they asked us for a video and we submitted it to them. It protected our officers, because he was not right".
Drunk people ask for taxis, even the army to clear their snow
The season of chopping wood in the 112 center starts when, like everywhere else, the phone calls them from someone's pocket and the sound of a chainsaw is all the person hears.
“Those are some of the funny situations. But we know it's not intentional. We have a large number of fake calls, scams, but also those who call thinking that this is the number of information, banks, some other services... Sometimes they ask for help for things that are not within our competence, they complain about the quality of food products, personal disputes... In those cases, when we explain to them, they mostly understand, but some don't accept the fact that they dialed the wrong number, so we have aggressive outbursts and performances. However, we know how to react. Fake calls and those who call by mistake disturb us, especially in the summer season, when there are a large number of calls and fewer people, and every moment is important to us," says the leader of one of the shifts, Jasmina Mustafić.
He explains that in case of extreme emergency, they block numbers, but for a certain period:
"We don't block anyone permanently, because they may really need help. First we call and warn, if children call we look for someone older, and finally we block for a couple of hours".
Mustafić and her colleagues Aleksandra Lakić and Ranko Vuković remember and call a man who was returning home from the city drunk at two after midnight:
"He asked the police to send a car for him and bring him home. "Often, at night, drunk people call and ask for a taxi, and one man from Bar called and asked us to send the army to clear the snow," says Mustafić.
Lakić remembers a call from a woman whose battery had died and who had an accident:
"She knows she's calling us, because she's calling us on purpose because her husband is on duty in that city and she wants to hide the accident from him. She asked us to urgently send her husband's colleagues to help her, but to tell them that he must not find out, because he will be angry". A few days ago, their number was called by a man who repeated the question - are they from Tuzi, Montenegro?
"We asked him what he needed, and he said that he needed the police in Tuzi. When we put them together, the policewoman said he needed help. When asked - what kind, he answered - all kinds, I want to sue the psychiatrist. He said he didn't remember who he was," says Mustafić.
The season of false alarms about planted bombs bypassed them - they only had one call from Bijelo Polje.
Most often, however, they are called by those who should call 122 and report that someone is trying to kill themselves, robberies, robberies, fights, domestic violence...
"During the summer, the largest number of those who are fed up need our help and engagement of the services we send, which are mainly rescues in the mountains and at sea... This is our direct engagement, and we coordinate the action... Fires as well. Mostly our role in these actions is crucial", says Mustafić.
The helicopter took off due to a fictitious evacuation
From the archive of cases in which citizens tried to abuse emergency situations, the employees of the 112 service single out a few.
"During the state of emergency in 2012, a man from Martinić called and reported that there was a seriously ill child in the house, which he could not take to the doctor because they were covered in snow. Then we sent a man from the Protection Service on a snowmobile who drove the doctor to the door of the house. When the doctor appeared, the man who called asked - where is the cleaner? They told him what kind of cleaner, you were looking for a doctor, and he replied that everyone was healthy, but that he thought he would clear the road faster, because he had to go to the city," says Miljević.
He adds that they had many similar situations back then, but that the case of a woman who went to Morača with her two children to live with her parents is striking.
"She asked for transport by helicopter to Podgorica. We asked her if everyone was healthy, if they were warm, if they had food... She answered that they had everything, but that she had to return to her husband in Podgorica. It was explained to her to wait, because there are urgent cases in the country, which need help more. She "brought it up" and we received information that fifteen people had to be evacuated from that area. The helicopter arrived there, but only she and the children were supposed to drive to Podgorica. These are abuses," Miljević said.
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