Dial 111 every time, Fire Service urges

The ad campaign also highlights the range of emergencies firefighters attend, such as chemical spills.

A fire safety campaign starting this week aims to make sure all calls about potentially dangerous fires are answered.

Firefighters have been returning to their stations to find answering machine messages informing them about "a small fire" they might like to check on when they aren't too busy.

Unfortunately, by the time many of the messages are received, the small fire has had hours to destroy property and land or potentially claim a life.

In an attempt to get people ringing 111 instead of their local brigade, the Fire Service is running a series of advertisements.

The ads, which also tell people they are "right to react" if they see something suspicious, will run for a year.

The ads show the consequences of people not calling 111 in three different scenarios.

The first shows a small bonfire on a beach, which a person decides is no big deal. A spark jumps to dry grass and before long a fire is threatening a house.

Communications Centre national manager Ian Pickard said the other two advertisements showed people the variety of jobs firefighters attended.

In one a motorist notices skid marks leading to a broken fence and down the side of a bank.

The motorist decides it is probably an old crash, and continues. The camera pans down the bank to an upturned car where a bloodied hand emerges from the window.

The final ad shows the consequences of not calling 111 when a bottle of pink liquid is seen lying in a gutter - children later play in the corrosive liquid.

Mr Pickard said the campaign was prompted by a growing number of calls to stations, many of which are manned by volunteers and not attended fulltime.

A Fire Service survey found 3000 calls were going to fire stations instead of 111. He had even had a message on his cellphone from a member of the public about a fire. The caller said it was a false alarm and not to worry, but Mr Pickard said that kind of call should be made to 111 - not his cellphone.

The survey found that 4 per cent of New Zealanders did not know to ring 111 in an emergency; 38 per cent would deal with a small rubbish fire themselves; and 41 per cent would attend to a smoke alarm if it went off.

Mr Pickard said the findings were concerning, as they showed that many people weren't getting the message that in case of a fire they should "get out, stay out and call 111".