999 calls a record as cases flood in

Drunken brawls, car smashes and hoax calls gave West Midlands Ambulance its busiest New Year in history – with a call every nine seconds.

The first three hours of 2010 saw the service receive 1,269 999 calls – about the same number fielded in the first five hours of New Year's Day last year. Some hospital A&E departments were four times as busy as on a normal night.

An ambulance was called to a house in Wolverhampton at 7.05pm when an apparently healthy man in his 40s suddenly collapsed after suffering a heart attack.

Paramedics found his family trying resusciation.

Shortly before 11.20pm the same crew helped restore breathing for a Walsall woman in her 40s who went into cardiac arrest, before going to Walsall Manor Hospital.

Beverley Morgan, on-call site manager at New Cross Hospital, Wolverhampton, said 76 patients were admitted to the A&E unit after midnight compared with 53 last year.

Denise Fraser, matron on A&E at Walsall Manor Hospital, said they still had patients at 8.30am who came in overnight. There were lots of alcohol-related admissions."

Richard Kirby, Sandwell and City Hospitals chief operating officer, said there were about 40 people in A&E at City Hospital at 5am when normally there would be about 10. There were a lot of head injuries.

A temporary minor injury unit in Dudley treated 18 people and four went to hospital.

A man who called 999 in Rowley Regis said a friend "has refused a drink which is not like him. He is ill."