A few years back, when I started taking 999 calls in LAS Control, I was told the following by a member of the Language Line staff [the people the call goes thru when the caller does not speak English]. In many Eastern European countries, there is ONE single number which they dial for any and all "emergencies" (real or imagined). In other words; house on fire, heart attack, robbery, washing machine broken, electricity failure, one number is dialled, and the call dealt with/filtered accordingly. How true this is I don't know, but it would go a long way to explaining the number of unnecessary calls from persons of that extraction.