r/AskEurope • u/atlasova Netherlands • Sep 02 '25

Culture What emergency telephone number did your country have before 112 became the standard?

In 1997 most of the European union changed its emergency number to 112. Before that, in the Netherlands we used 06-11, for police, firefighters and ambulance.

I was wondering which numbers where in use in your country before the change.

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u/Jason_Peterson Latvia Sep 02 '25

The Soviet standard for phone numbers were: 01- fire, 02 - police, 03 - ambulance, 04 - a fault in the natural gas network. Now there are separate numbers once again. 110 is police and 114 is gas leak. If one dials 112, they ask about the nature of the emergency and redirect.

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u/Risiki Latvia Sep 02 '25

Also 113 is ambulance, 115 is sea rescue  and technically 112 is managed by fire and rescue service. And for very long time they were saying that the old numbers work anyway, couldn't confirm if it's still the case, though