999 will be the new Emergency Number for Police, Ambulance and Fire Service

The Royal Gibraltar Police (RGP), Gibraltar Health Authority (GHA) and Gibraltar Fire and Rescue Service (GFRS) have announced that, with effect from Monday, March 18, there will just be one Emergency number for all three services – 999.

This single number will replace the number 190 for Fire and Ambulance and 199 or 112 for Police.

From Monday, March 18 onwards, when someone calls 999, they will hear an automatic reply which will provide them with three options, namely Press 1 for Police, Press 2 for Ambulance and Press 3 for Fire.

“It is our aspiration that, in the not-too-distant future, all emergency calls will be handled by a single, unified Control Room… but we are not quite there yet,” said an RGP spokesperson
When a user selects Option 1 it will go direct to Royal Gibraltar Police, and Option 3 will go direct to the Fire Service.

During the next few weeks, Option 2 for Ambulance will continue to be answered via the Fire Service but then a direct line to the GHA will become operational.

Once that has happened, Option 2 calls will go direct to Ambulance dispatchers at the GHA.

The old numbers will continue to work for some period after March 18 and their usage will be monitored as the weeks go by.

Should a person not physically be able to get to their mobile using Siri does work . However, if that is not successful the default position is that calls will be picked up by the Police Control Room.

In order to inform as many people as possible of the new 999 number, advertisements have been placed in the local newspapers and GBC will publicise the new number on TV and radio. Posters, some in Spanish, will be placed in public buildings, in buses and at construction sites.

In terms of the Moroccan community, the several Muslim officers in the RGP are passing the information to their community via the Mosques.

The Chamber of Commerce and the Gibraltar Federation of Small Businesses have agreed to inform their members of the change.

The main providers of telephone services have been advised of the change but commercial entities who use any other lines (such as PSTN, PBX, VoIP/SIP etc) should ensure that their systems are able to call the new 999 emergency number.