The alarm goes off at a fire station, and like a well-oiled machine, firefighters spring into action to handle the emergency.

Many times after arriving, however, they discover that there's no emergency after all. Such calls may sound like a simple matter of turning around and going back to the station, but the underlying concern is that too many false calls will eventually affect a real emergency.

"When the call comes in, you don't have time to think if this is a false alarm or the real thing, you just react and handle it like it's the real thing," said Russellville Fire Chief Joe Mansell. "We're blessed that our false alarms are far and few between, but we do get them."

Sheffield Police Chief Greg Ray said it's not unusual for his police department to get four to five hang-up calls a week.

"We have to go check each one," Ray said. "That's four to five calls that an officer goes on that they could be on another call helping someone."

Unfortunately, false or "phantom" 911 calls are a growing problem with emergency phone services.

According to the Center for Problem-Oriented Policing, millions of people mistakenly call 911 every day.

The National Emergency Number Association reports that in the U.S., the 911 system handles 500,000 calls daily, or about 183 million each year. Of those, 25 to 70 percent are phantom calls, with most coming from wireless phones.

In the United Kingdom, National Emergency Number Association officials say there are an average of 11,000 phantom calls a day on their 999 emergency system.

The Shoals is not immune to the problem.

In Colbert County in 2007, there were 41,969 calls to 911. Of those, 9,713 were either open lines, hang-up calls, prank calls or the wrong number, according to data from emergency services.

Franklin County officials say there were 14,000 calls to the 911 center. 3,500 were either open line, hang-ups or wrong numbers.

Lauderdale County 911 officials said there were approximately 52,000 calls in 2007 with 6,700 hang-up calls, "but someone has to be sent out on them regardless," said Lauderdale EMA Director George Grabryan.

Wasting valuable time is not the only repercussion of a false call.

"There have been accidents involving fire trucks while they're (responding) to an emergency call, and that call turned out to be a false alarm," said Charlie Cochran, chief of Florence Fire and Rescue.

Cochran said his department, as a matter of policy, allows the company or companies within the area of the emergency to travel with lights and sirens on automatic alarms that requires several units to respond.

"The other responding (units) obey all traffic laws until we know what we have going on," the chief said. "This is done as a safety measure."

Ray said one of the dangers of so many hang-up or nonemergency calls, is that it can cause complacency.

"Every year, you read about officers getting killed responding to a silent alarm or responding to an alarm that may turn out to be false, and the cause of the accident is because of complacency because a lot of the silent alarm calls are the same ones over and over," Ray said. "And when the officers goes on the same call time after time, and it's a false alarm, it's human nature to have a tendency to get complacent."

Ray said 99 out of 100 of the false calls or hang-up calls are accidental.

"But then, you've got that one percent that's real," he said. "So, every call, no matter what, has to be treated like it's real."

Rick Jones, operations issues director for National Emergency Number Association, said people do abuse the system.

"There have been people who call 911 to get a wake-up call," Jones said.

He said the problem lies in the fact that "an emergency differs from people to people and from town to town."

"We got a call once from someone saying to hurry, their grandma was dying. When emergency personnel got there, the woman had gas in her stomach," said Brandon James, of the Franklin County 911 Operations Center. "It's frustrating, because people don't know what an emergency is."

James said people need to be educated on 911 and when to call and when not to.

"The 911 system works great. When someone needs help, they can get it," James said.

"Unfortunately, it's like anything else; it can be abused."

James said he remembers a time when a small child was playing with a cell phone and 911 was dialed 30 to 40 times in a row.

"The parents didn't think anything about it because there was no service on the phone," James said. "What they didn't know was that if the battery is still charged, the phone can be used to dial 911."

James said the frustrating thing is that every call has to be handled like it's an actual emergency.

"You never know when that one call could be the real thing," Ray said. Jones said it's not so much the concern of 911 workers that they are being overworked, but that a phantom call could hamper someone in need of help from getting it in a timely manner.

"That's the scary thing," said Colbert County EMA Director Mike Melton. "That's why we urge people not to tie up the 911 lines with false calls."

Tom Smith can be reached at 740-5757 or tom.smith@timesdaily.com.