Fire brigade urges public to use common sense after hundreds of calls from people locked in toilets

Firefighters revealed a list of their strangest 999 calls – including a child with their head stuck in a potty – as they urged the public to use “a little bit of common sense”.

The London Fire Brigade said they had responded to 659 incidents of people getting locked in toilets and 59 relating to dogs and cats trapped in unusual places in the last three years.

Seventeen calls were about children with their heads stuck in toilet seats.

The fire brigade was also called out to a woman stuck up a tree while trying to retrieve a cat, a pet snake trapped in a ring, a pigeon lodged in a chimney, a cat stuck in a gutter after jumping out of a skylight and a hamster wedged between a toilet and a wall.

Deputy commissioner Tom George said: “No matter how strange a call may seem, we will always attend if there is a genuine emergency but you should always think carefully about how to use our resources.

“A number of the more unusual calls we attend involve children or animals so we would always urge Londoners to keep an eye on their youngsters or pets to ensure they aren’t getting themselves into sticky situations which could be avoided.”

With April Fool’s Day looming, the fire brigade also asked the public not to make hoax or unnecessary calls.

The emergency service has received received more than 32,000 hoax calls since 2014, according to statistics released earlier this month under the Freedom of Information Act.

While the figures have fallen by 40 per cent over that period, firefighters still received 5,410 hoax calls last year. Of those, 4,201 were challenged and rejected by control officers and 1,209 turned out to be false alarms when crews responded.

“With the help of our control officers challenging calls, we have been able to reduce the number of hoax calls we receive and this enables us to be available for when there is a genuine emergency,” said Mr George.