Genoa. A million and almost 110 thousand calls last year. It is the impressive number of emergency calls handled by the NewThe 112the number that, for the past seven years, everyone in Liguria has had to dial to report large or small disasters emergencies. Everything passes through here, from the collapse of the Morandi bridge to floods, from fires to murders, from the report of a theft to a minor illness throughout Liguria.
A whirlwind ‘filter’ for 3500 calls a day
The 112 operations center is located in the San Martino hospital complex, two floors above the 118 center, the one dedicated to health emergencies in the Genoa area. It was inaugurated on 14 February 2017, the third region, Liguria, to comply with the European directive on the single number for emergencies. It’s a gigantic onefilter‘which in about 90 seconds, a minute and a halfreceives the first information and redirects the call to one of the 39 connected operations rooms (police, carabinieri, fire brigade or 118 of the competent territories) and must quickly answer two fundamental questions: what and where?
“The worst month is July which alone makes 11% of the annual calls – he explains Andrea Furgani, medical director and coordinator of 112 – but in general the hottest period is the summer which denotes the tourist vocation of Liguria”. June-July and August alone account for 32% of call volume. Each operator at the end of the shift with around 200-250 calls under his belt. On average they arrive at the station 3500 calls per day.
These calls are distributed to 39 operations rooms specific across the region. In detail the 54% are forwarded to the health emergency, 36.8% to the police, 9.2% to firefighters. Among the local police forces, only that of Genoa is currently the only one integrated into the 112 system.
Localization
If the first question that a 112 operator asks the user is “which municipality exactly are you calling from”, the location of the call arrives automatically and almost in real time on the operators’ terminals. “The moment you answer – he explains Giorgia Poloni, shift representative – a probability cell is immediately generated if it is a mobile phone and after a few seconds the precise location of the ‘aml’ also arrives. If the user calls from a landline, we will have all the data for that phone, i.e. name, surname and address. However, if the user has no reception because he is in an inaccessible place or the phone has no SIM, a number will still appear but the localization will be less punctual”. “
Until a couple of years ago – adds Furgani – localization was done only with the triangulation of repeaters of mobile telephony, but there are less covered areas and therefore sometimes the cell risked being very large. Now both Android and iOS have it implemented the aml system which, unless disabled by the user, is very accurate. Now 60% of calls that arrive from mobiles have GPS localization.”
The Where are you app and silent calls
Then there is an app that allows not only immediate localization of the caller but also functions that can prove indispensable. For this reason it would be an excellent thing for all Ligurians to install it: “The app Where are you – explains Poloni – it allows you to immediately have the caller’s name and surname, gender, emergency number connected and precise location. Then there is the possibility of the so-called called silent, that is to say that if a person is in difficulty and cannot speak we can still hear the environmental message and immediately pass it on to whoever is competent in that case. Finally, for deaf and dumb people there is the possibility of chat directly with the operator to explain the situation”.
For users who do not speak Italian there is a special service interpreting connected directly with the exchange: “It is a contract with an interpreter company – explains Furgani – which allows the operator, if the latter is able to directly identify the language of the caller, to dial a rapid code to call the correct interpreter. Otherwise there is an automatic responder with a code with which the user can indicate his language and activate the correct interpreter. And when the phone call is diverted to the relevant operations rooms, the translator is also diverted.”
Prank calls and “improper calls”
55% of calls arriving in 2023 at 112 were blocked by this first emergency ‘filter’. These are the so-called improper calls.
“Last spring all the emergency situations in Europe and beyond – explains Furgani – had a very serious problem due to an Android update which meant that touching the side button three times started the emergency call. In practice the operators, who have the obligation to recall if the user does not respond, wasted a lot of time and had great difficulty managing real calls”.
But beyond the telephone alarms there are improper calls made voluntarily ranging from jokes telephone numbers, at call for a taxi or for book a visit in hospital. “Also because we are the ones who always answer” explains Poloni who recounts, almost with a bit of embarrassment, when he had to call the principal of a school “because several calls had arrived in a series from the same number and they were kids. The location told us there was only one there school. After I called the head teacher, the calls stopped coming.” One of these calls also arrives while we are there: an operator answers, listens and understands that he is a boy. The call comes from a telephone booth in the Di Negro area but luckily the boy then understands the joke in poor taste and stops it.
8 hour shifts and non-stop calls
The 112 editorial team tends to be ‘pink’. At the moment, 25 women and 16 men work at the station. 41 people working on 8 hour shifts. The average age is 41 years. “You enter with a competition public event organized by San Martino – explains Furgani – for technical operators. There is a lot of turnover, with an annual turnover of around 15% because it is a very heavy job.”
The calls – as we can see – arrive almost non-stop to the operators. Among these is a lady who is unable to book an exam, another who requests medical transport for a booked visit. There is a gentleman who calls because she saw smoke while driving along the A10: the operator calls the firefighters who already know about that fire and ask not to pass any more calls for this type of report. This also represents an important filter for relieve the burden on the competent centres: “All calls made by people who report injuries or are directly involved are taken and forwarded. The ‘pure’ reports, which sometimes arrive many kilometers away from the event – at a certain point are instead blocked by explaining that help is already on site”.
Tags: emergency calls day arrive Liguria Heres direct
