It is obviously unacceptable that a man died after making three futile attempts to call 112. The Minister for the Interior, Jan Jambon unequivocally stated this during an interview on VRT-Radio, going out of his way to announce a solution for this type of issue.
When emergency telephone lines in a given area are overloaded by other local emergencies, calls will now be redirected to other telephone lines so that the caller may be assisted, he explained. He said that admittedly such an announcement comes too little, too late and is hardly any consolation for the victim's family.
The Belgian newspapers are reporting today (Thursday) that on June 6th, emergency lines were overloaded with calls owing to the storms that day.
A man from Melsele, in the municipality of Beveren, East Flanders suffered the humiliation of trying three times, to absolutely no avail, to call 112, when he desperately needed help. No one took his call and he was, unfortunately, found dead several days later.
(Source: Belga)
