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STAFF REPORTER

PALMA
THE 112 emergency centre last year handled one million calls and responded to 150'000 incidents.
The director of the 112 Balearic emergency services, Isabel Juste, revealed the figures for 2008 yesterday and said that the three busiest areas for the service are Palma, Ibiza and Calvia - especially between May and October when much of their work is dedicated to attending fire scene and rescues.

July and August, the peak of the holiday season, is when the 112 paramedics are the busiest. In Palma, there are some 50'000 incidents per year, 25'000 in Calvia and 10'000 in Ibiza and since the 112 emergency centre began handling all emergency calls in the Balearics, it also offers help and assistance in ten different languages.

Last year, the call centre handled 6'377 calls in foreign languages, the majority - 4'158 - in English. 2'049 emergency calls were dealt with in German, 141 in French, 16 in Dutch, 10 in Italian and the rest in languages as diverse as Russian, Arabic and Portuguese.

What is more, the bulk of the foreign calls, 5'245 to be exact, were handled in Majorca.
One in three of the total number of incidents and emergencies responded to were public safety issues such as traffic accidents and medical emergencies.

The 112 service did respond to a small number of cases of public disorder and also received a number of hoax calls which are always logged and reported to the authorities.