The worrying news comes after Ian Paterson, aged 17 and of no fixed address, recently walked free from Doncaster Youth Court with a 12-month referral order and an ASBO for making the false call which ended in the death of mum-of-two Nicola Stacey.

To highlight the issue the paper has teamed up with firefighters to try to track down some of the culprits who are putting lives at risk.

Visitors to www.scarborougheveningnews.co.uk can now hear two new recordings which feature children, who sound quite young, reporting separate incidents earlier this month.

This brings the total number of recordings posted on the website since April to eight and highlights a problem where valuable resources are diverted to non-existant fires – putting lives in danger if real emergencies happened at the same time.

According to figures released by North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service there have been a total of 27 false alarm and malicious calls in the Scarborough area so far this year – compared to 14 for the same period last year.

Mark Warren, the temporary manager at Scarborough Fire Station, said staff were trained to recognise likely malicious calls but firefighters had still attended almost half of the calls received this year.

He said: "Due to the expertise of control room staff in call challenging, the impact of these deliberate acts to hinder the Fire and Rescue Service in its service delivery to the public has been limited, with a response being initiated following only 13 of the calls made.

"Malicious calls remain a serious issue for all emergency services, any information relating to the calls made should be passed to the Police."

3RD JULY 2008 - CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD OR LISTEN TO AN AUDIO CLIP OF THE CALL

17TH JULY 2008 - CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD OR LISTEN TO AN AUDIO CLIP OF THE CALL

22ND JULY 2008 - CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD OR LISTEN TO AN AUDIO CLIP OF THE CALL