CHENNAI: The weather gods may have pulled a wet blanket over the festival of lights this year, but a sharp increase in the rate of calls received by 108 emergency services ensured that their personnel across the State had a busy festival. As per statistics available with 108 GVK-EMRI, though the number of emergency calls received on October 25-26 were marginally lower than those received last year, the number of accident-related calls rose sharply.
"Usually, out of the 20,000-odd calls that we receive only 10-15% of the calls are confirmed to be actual emergencies, but this Diwali the rate of emergency calls rose sharply to touch 26 %," informed Prabhudoss B, Regional Manager - EMRI. With heavy showers and flooding seen across several coastal towns in the state, this meant that the emergency staff had a torrid Diwali, effecting more rescues than on a normal day. Where they normally make about 1200 rescues, Diwali prompted as many as 1700 rescues this year.
This year, 6890 emergency calls were registered, of which the number of road accident cases (1313) saw a marginal increase over cases registered last Diwali (1229), across two days. "While there were 8434 calls registered last year, this year as there were technically more emergencies, we were overloaded. The road trauma cases were difficult to get at in places such as Cuddalore and Nagapattinam because of floods that deterred the ambulances at times," he added.
It has also emerged that road accidents were the majority of emergency calls made during the Diwali season and these were significantly higher that accidents recorded on a normal day. A source in the RG Government General Hospital explained the spike in road accidents as a consequence of "festive revelry". He also added that a majority of the cases that they attended to or were referred to them were two wheeler accidents, resulting from driving under the influence of alcohol.
However, when contacted, Additional Commissioner of Police (Traffic), Sanjay Arora revealed that the number of fatal accidents in Chennai recorded on Diwali day were "marginally below the daily average". Surprisingly, victims of burns and fire mishaps were at an all time low, this year. Only 65 burns victims were handled by 108 as opposed to 75 such cases in 2010. "Good awareness campaigns and the timing of the rains helped in making this Diwali a very safe festival," concluded Prabhudoss.
Even at Kilpauk Medical College, where victims are referred to their special burns ward, only 12 cases were registered till Thursday evening. "We had made precautionary arrangements of setting up 20 beds for burns victims this Diwali, but only one was admitted and the rest had only minor injuries," said KMC Medical Superintendent Dr R Sukumar.
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