CALLERS dialling 999 were met with an answer phone message when telephone lines were hit.
EMERGENCY services faced a serious communications problem when callers dialling 999 were met with an answer phone message after telephone lines were hit.
People needing police, fire and ambulance services experienced problems nationwide, including some callers in Suffolk who had trouble getting through to the ambulance service.
The problem, which happened between noon and 4pm yesterday, was linked to flooding in London and the south of the country, which caused an overload to the 999 line.
Suffolk police and Suffolk Fire Service said their services were not affected, but the East of England Ambulance Service said callers in the county were among those facing “sporadic difficulties”.
A spokesman for the ambulance service said: “In Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire, where calls come through to the Norwich call centre, we experienced sporadic difficulties.”
Suffolk police and Suffolk Fire Service said they had not had any reports of people having problems getting through to them but the fire service said it had been taking emergency calls for other parts of the country which were experiencing a high number of calls because of the flooding.
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