NSW Rural Fire Service (RFS) staff arrived one hour late to a shed fire in Marulan after a Triple Zero caller failed to provide the precise address to the operator.
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At about 6.56pm, on January 16, a Triple Zero operator received a call from a resident in Marulan reporting black smoke out of a shed.
Before the operator was able to attain any further information, the call was terminated.
Close to one hour later, two crews from the Marulan Fire Brigade located the property near the Hume Highway.
The small shed was completely destroyed.
Crews extinguished the remaining fire and determined the fire began due to a generator storage.
Large deep cycle batteries, generators and an inverter were housed in the shed.
“It is critically important that when making a call to Triple Zero to report an emergency, that the person making the call remains on the line with operator and answers all questions to ensure that emergency services are able to be dispatched to the scene as quickly as possible,” Southern Tablelands Zone Operational Office Daniel Osborne said.
“The delay reaching the scene was due to a lack of information provided by triple zero caller.”
