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Hamburg (dpa / lno) - Trigger the fire alarm just for fun?

Or announce a bomb to avoid difficult school exams?

Anyone who deliberately triggers false alarms in the police and fire department usually has to dig deep into their pockets afterwards.

The Hamburg fire brigade recently had to write many invoices for maliciously triggered fire alarms.

This was the case a total of 314 times in 2019, as a spokesman for the German Press Agency in Hamburg said.

The numbers were similarly high in the previous year, when the fire brigade was called 296 times “just for fun”.

The figures for 2020 were not yet available.

"In the case of improper alarms, the cost notices amount to an average of 423 euros in 2018, provided that a polluter could be identified," the spokesman said.

How high the bills were on average in 2019 has not yet been determined because the police and prosecutor had not yet completed their investigations in all cases.

However, the fire brigade billing for false alarms from companies' automatic fire alarm systems is significantly more frequent.

As a result, the fire brigade had to deploy almost 3,300 times in 2019 (2018: 3920 times).

In such cases, the operator of the fire detector must pay the operating costs.

In 2018, an average of 854 euros was due for this, in 2019 a fire brigade operation without real action cost an average of 989 euros.

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That is more expensive than a deliberate false alarm because more emergency services are usually dispatched.

"For example, when a fire alarm system is triggered in an industrial complex or a large hotel, a higher number of forces is alerted than is the case with an allegedly burning garbage can in the open," said the fire department spokesman.

If a citizen calls the fire brigade because of a beeping smoke alarm in the neighbour's apartment, no invoice will be billed if it turns out to be a false alarm.

If a danger is suspected, the fire brigade should always be alerted, the spokesman emphasized.

It is absolutely undesirable for people not to dial the emergency number for fear of possible costs.

At the end of the year, the fire brigade received invoices for deployment costs from the police and fire brigade totaling several million euros.

Money that flows completely into Hamburg's city coffers.

In 2018, according to the fire department, it was around three million euros.

The figures for 2019 and 2020 were not yet fully recorded.

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Compared to this, the police wrote significantly fewer bills for emergency call abuse in 2018 and 2019.

In 2018 there were a total of five cases and in 2019 a total of ten cases in which fees were charged for "improper use of the police", as a press spokeswoman for the dpa said.

In 2018, 1290.70 euros and in 2019 a total of 3201.49 euros were demanded from the polluters.

Cases like the false alarm in the summer of 2020 at the Hamburg school with a follow-up invoice of 45,000 euros to the parents of the 13-year-old, who probably announced a rampage just for fun, are a rarity.

"Comparable incidents of this magnitude have hardly happened so far."

© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210123-99-138558 / 2

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The police tweeted about the 45,000 euro bill

Written small request from the CDU on false alarms and missions from June 2019