..... non-emergency & false-emergency calls to these units, who will need to respond.

This nationalisation is not something to be celebrating its an opportunity to ask why hasn't it always been this way? Its disgraceful that in a modern country the fire service is something you have to pay for? There must be no more offloading basic civilian services that should be free onto the army or volunteers so government can save money.

False emergency calls should be considered an offense and the caller fined but t why should people pay for real calls. What should go with this side by side is a government campaign to promote awareness. Encourage people to buy smoke alarms, fire blankets, fire extinguishers. Send out leaflets informing them how to avoid some of the most basic causes of household fires. Help prevent the fire makes it better for everybody. All we need to do now is bring the 3 emergency service numbers under one operators so you don't have to remember do I dial 101 or 102 or 103 for this problem. Much easier and probably even cheaper to have a single number for all the emergency service go through a central operator. The US you want police, fire or ambulance you dial 911 in the UK its 999 in Israel we have 3 different numbers.

I missed this because I lived so long in the States. I'm pretty sure in the land of capitalism and free market fire fighting is nationalized. It seems like common sense. About time we joined the rest of the civilized world. At least w.r.t. firefighting.

About 50% of the calls the police gets on a regular basis are not real calls, and many of them made as pranks or by mentally unstable people. Still, no one would think to defer police activity to local authorities or any such nonsense. It's good that there will be a national firefighting unit now.

Fire, Police, Military. Those are the three services that every government must provide its citizens.