Hoax 'Mayday' call in Blackpool leads to 3 hour rescue search costing thousands of pounds

More than 30 volunteers joined the search and thousands of pounds in resources were wasted after the hoax caller radioed for help at 1pm.

The 'Mayday' call was picked up by HM Coastguard in Holyhead, North Wales with a man claiming to be onboard a 15-metre vessel (49ft) on fire at the end of a pier in Blackpool.

The man said he was one of three men onboard a commercial vessel which had suffered an engine fire and were in need of rescue.

The call led to an immediate response from HM Coastguard crews in Lytham and Fleetwood, with volunteers mobilised within minutes.

They searched for the ship along the coastline from Gynn Square to Squires Gate, but found no sign of it despite near perfect visibility in all directions.

As the emergency search was under way, the hoax caller remained in communication on the radio, and continued to deceive his rescuers.

Fearing the vessel was in danger of sinking, HM Coastguard requested the services of RNLI Blackpool who launched a lifeboat from its station near Central Pier.

In addition to the rescue teams searching the freezing waters, HM Coastguard alerted its operations centre at Holyhead who diverted one of its helicopters from a training exercise to join the search.

But after around three hours of searching, with no ship fire in sight, information gathered from the 'Mayday' radio signal established that it was coming from inland at a location in Blackpool.

The call was deemed a hoax and all teams were stood down.

Paul Little, station manager at HM Coastguard in Lytham, said the hoax had cost thousands of pounds in wasted resources and put the lives of rescuers at risk.

But he said such transmissions had to be treated as real because rescue teams cannot take the risk that someone is in genuine need of help.

He said: "If we think someone's in danger or in trouble, we will always search for them rather than risk loss of life.

"It is incredibly frustrating because this man was on the radio for a long time and continued to pretend that he was in danger, even as we stepped up our rescue operations to help him.

"Because of this, we had to deploy a number of rescue teams and wasted resources that could have been needed in a real emergency elsewhere."

He said the use of the Coastguard helicopter had cost thousands of pounds.

"But we can't just call the search off because we're struggling to find a ship", said Paul.

"Instead, our response is to step up our efforts and commit more resources to find those in need of our help."

Paul said the Coastguard has a number of ways it can establish whether a call is likely to be a hoax or not. He said there are also ways in which malicious calls can be traced with the help of police.

But he says the life-and-death nature of sea rescues means time is the crucial factor and crews have to act fast and treat all call-outs in good faith.

He said: "Unfortunately, we do get these hoax calls every now and then, but it is not very often we have one from someone who keeps the charade up for so long.

"The longer it went on and the more he talked, the more it didn't add up. We had our suspicions and these were eventually confirmed when our transmitters traced the call inland to Blackpool.

"The mind boggles why anyone would want to do something like this. If there had been another real incident at the time, our rescue teams would have been stretched because of this man and his silly games.

"If anyone has any information about who this man might be, we ask that you report it to police as this man is liable to be fined for his irresponsible actions."

Paul said people making hoax calls can be fined by Ofcom as it is deemed an offence under the Broadcasting Act 1996.