Trends

The Emergency Response Centre receives more than a million calls per year. In 2017, there were 986,402 emergency calls made and the help and information centre received about 100,000 additional calls. About half of emergency calls require that an ambulance, rescue workers or police is sent to the scene.

Emergency calls

During the first eight months of 2018, 684,631 calls were made, i.e. about 2,817 calls per day. The number of calls has increased by 3% when compared to the previous year. The largest number of calls is made from Northern Estonia – 45% of calls.  21% of calls originates from Southern Estonia, 19% of calls were made from the Eastern Estonian region and 14% calls from the region of Western Estonia.  On average, 520 calls are made per capita. In 94% of cases, 112 calls were answered within 1–10 seconds.

Events

Within the first eight months of 2018, 277,722 events were registered, which amounts to about 1,143 events per day. Most prevalent were medical events (61%), followed by police events (27%) and rescue events (4%). Combined events, which required the help of at least two fields, occurred 20,018 times (7%).

On average, 703 medical, 308 police and 50 rescue events are registered in a day. The highest number of events takes place in Northern Estonia (43%). 24% of the events takes place in the region of Southern Estonia, 19% in the region of Eastern Estonia and 14% events occurs in the region of Western Estonia.

Help and information centre

During the first eight months of 2018, the phone lines of the help and information centre (HIC): 1313 (the environmental emergency hotline), 1345 (the local government helpline), 1510 (the road information line) and 1524 (the information line of the Rescue Service), received 73,450 calls, i.e. 302 calls per day on average.

The phone line of 1345 is the busiest (29,347 calls during January–August 2018), the phone line 1313 received 28,138 calls during the same period. The road information line 1510 received 10,513 calls during eight months. The lowest number of calls was made to the number 1524 (5,452 calls).

When compared to the same period of the preceding year, the number of calls made to the numbers of HIC has increased 17%. One of the reasons for this was that the road information line 1510 was added to the numbers of the help and information centre from November 2017.