999 (emergency telephone number)

999 is an official emergency telephone number in a number of countries which allows the caller to contact emergency services for urgent assistance.

Countries and territories using 999 include Bahrain, Bangladesh, Botswana, Ghana, Hong Kong, Kenya, Macau, Malaysia, Mauritius, Qatar, Ireland, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Swaziland, Trinidad and Tobago, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and Zimbabwe.

999 is the official emergency number for the United Kingdom, but calls are also accepted on the European Union emergency number, 112. All calls are answered by 999 operators. Calls are always free.

In the United Kingdom there are four emergency services which maintain full-time Emergency Control Centres (ECC), to which 999 emergency calls may be directly routed by emergency operators in telephone company Operator Assistance Centres (OAC). These services are as follows, listed in the order of percentage of calls received:

Other emergency services may also be reached through the 999 system, but do not maintain permanent Emergency Control Centres. All of these emergency services are summoned through the ECC of one of the four principal services listed above:

First introduced in the London area on 30 June 1937, the UK's 999 number is the world's oldest emergency call telephone service. The system was introduced following a fire on 10 November 1935 in a house on Wimpole Street in which five women were killed. A neighbour had tried to telephone the fire brigade and was so outraged at being held in a queue by the Welbeck telephone exchange that he wrote a letter to the editor of The Times, which prompted a government inquiry.

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