Emergency tweets could be trialled by Fire Brigade The Brigade has promised to look at taking the "calls" via Twitter as part of the new London Safety Plan. It currently advises against reporting fires and emergencies via social media because it does not monitor feeds 24 hours a day. The Brigade now says it "has pledged to look at how best to use social media in the future, including how it would respond to people using it to report incidents." The emergency services have already experienced people tweeting them to report fires, but fire chiefs said everybody should continue to dial 999 to report emergencies. The Brigade, which began using social media in 2010, said its Twitter feed, @LondonFire, is currently used to provide real-time information about incidents that are taking place across the capital. It uses Facebook to provide fire safety information, as well as engaging with the public informally on the work of the Brigade. Rita Dexter, Deputy Commissioner of London Fire Brigade, said "With over a billion people now using Facebook and half a billion using Twitter, it's quite clear that social media is here to stay. The London Fire Brigade is the biggest fire service in the country and we think it's important to look into ways to improve how we communicate with the public and how they can get in touch with us. When it was first set up in 1935, people said that dialling 999 to report emergencies would never work. Today BT handles over 30 million emergency calls each year. It's time to look at new ways for people to report emergencies quickly and efficiently and social media could provide the answer in the future. The Brigade will be the first emergency service in the UK to look into how apps, social media and micro-blogging sites, like Twitter, could be used by the public to report emergencies. According to communications regulator Ofcom, text-based communications are now surpassing phone calls, which declined five per cent in 2011.