Emergency 112 calls in other languages on the increase

The Canary Islands 112 emergency telephone number received a total of 8,532 calls and requests for assistance or help from either English, German, French or Italian speaking people during the 2013 period. This number of calls represents an increase of 151% since it starting offering multilingual assistance.

According to the Canary Islands Ministry of Security, Economy and Finance, their 112 service is the only one in Europe which offers its service in five different languages 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, managing the demands of the millions of tourists who visit the islands each year in a “quick and effective” manner.

By languages, 67.1 % of calls received during 2013 were responded to in English, with a total of 5,719 calls registered in that language. Next were calls made by German speaking people, registering 21.7% (1,853) of all calls in a foreign language followed by Italian, accounting for 7.6 % and finally French callers which accounted for 3.4% of all foreign calls.

The time of year in which foreign call activity increase was during the winter season months of December – March.
Regarding the types of incidents logged, most were related to security, which accounted for nearly 48% of all calls followed by health information (26.6%). 12.1% were accident related calls.