'Incredibly busy' Black Friday hits emergency services
Emergency services last night faced an 'incredibly busy' evening as they were hit by Black Friday.
While the emergency services only received four more calls than last year (a total of 1,159 for 2015) it was much busier than a normal Friday, due to it being the last Friday before Christmas.
While there were more 999 calls in Birmingham, the Black Country and Shropshire, there were less in Coventry & Warwickshire, Staffordshire and Herefordshire & Worcestershire.
In preparation for the evening West Midlands Ambulance Service ensured that they had more staff working.
Gold Commander for the evening, Nathan Hudson, said: "First of all, I'd like to thank our staff for their fantastic response to a very challenging evening. They worked really hard in often difficult circumstances dealing with patients who were often very much the worse for alcohol.
"We put a lot of planning into the evening and everything worked very well, which ensured we were able to provide a high level of service to patients, right across the region.
"I'd also like to thank the public, who in the main, followed our advice and looked after their friends who they were out with.
"It certainly looked like people were having a good time and celebrating Christmas, which is exactly what we were hoping they would be able to do."
On Black Friday in 2014 there were 1,155 999 calls across the region.
