VANCOUVER — British Columbia’s emergency line responder has released a list of the most unusual 911 calls this year, topped by a caller upset that their luggage exceeded flight carry-on limits, and another complaining that a store wouldn’t accept the return of an air-fryer.
E-Comm’s list also includes someone calling because their dishwasher broke, a person who wanted help removing a hornet from their apartment and someone unhappy with a haircut.
Others called 911 about a non-electric car parked in an electric-vehicle charging station, being locked out of their Airbnb, and to complain about traffic.
E-Comm handles 99 per cent of 911 calls in B.C., accounting for about two million calls a year.
It said that while most callers used 911 responsibly, some called for non-emergency reasons that did not require police, firefighters or paramedics, unnecessarily tying up resources.
Call taker Bailey Mitchell said in a release that while the reasons for the 911 calls may appear absurd, responders must treat every call as an emergency until it can be” confidently determined” to be not the case.
“Every second we spend fielding questions about traffic, hornets or bad haircuts is time that could otherwise be helping someone in a life-threatening emergency situation,” Mitchell said.
Emergency responders also fielded a call from someone reporting a lost iPad at a SkyTrain station, as well as another reporting a motorist who parked at a Starbucks coffee shop — but went into a grocery store instead.
Meanwhile, BC Hydro released a list of the most bizarre reasons for power outages across the province, including two separate instances of fish being dropped on power lines by birds in the B.C. Interior.
In July, an osprey dropped a fish on lines in Ashcroft, triggering a grass fire that knocked out power for almost a thousand customers. In August another osprey dropped a fish on lines in Quesnel, resulting another outage and the replacement of a power pole.
A crow that flew into a transformer in Delta in Metro Vancouver in July knocked out power to more than 4,500 customers, while the same month a beaver felled a large tree near Horsefly in the Cariboo region that crashed down on multiple lines.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 30, 2025.
The Canadian Press
