New Year's Spike In London Ambulance Calls

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Alcohol played a major role in a surge in ambulance calls during London's New Year's revelry, a report says. The London Ambulance Service said Monday it answered more than 1,500 calls for help between midnight and 4 a.m., up 8 percent from last year and the highest volume since the new millennium was rung in, The Daily Mail reported. "At the busiest point of the evening our staff was taking over 450 calls an hour, almost four times what they would expect to deal with on a normal night," Assistant Operations Director Ian Todd told The Daily Mail. The ambulance service had prepared for the big rush by setting up a non-emergency treatment center at Guy's Hospital and assigning some units to handle only non-emergency calls involving too much alcohol.