TRAVERSE CITY — False distress calls, usually unintentional, can stress rescue systems.
The U.S. Coast Guard has received 187 false distress calls since October 2025, with three confirmed to be intentionally fake, according to a USCG statement.
The penalty for making an intentional false call can be up to 10 years in prison or a fine
Gregory Grubbs works in the Great Lakes region for the US Coast Guard. Grubbs prefaced that false calls in general weren’t bad or malicious.
“False calls could be an individual on the beach that sees someone that they believe to be in distress, and they call us, and those kinds of calls we absolutely want,” he said. “We want people to continue reporting what they believe to be distressed. We don't want them making up distress situations, which is what we would call a hoax.”
He said hoax calls delay real distress calls because the Coast Guard has to determine the reality of the situation.
“They'll call us, and they could be inebriated, they could be playing around, they could just not understand the situation, or they could deliberately be trying to mess with the Coast Guard for whatever their purpose is,” he said.
For possibly intentional fake calls, the sectors of the Coast Guard will have five to seven people listen to the call to decide whether it is a hoax or not, which is then forwarded to the main Great Lakes Coast Guard, according to Grubbs.
“If one single person feels like there's a chance that that's a real distress (call), at that point, it's a real case we respond with resources, broadcasts, and anything that makes sense,” he said.
However, on the local level, the process is a bit different. Captain Steve Ball has been with the Traverse City Fire Department for 24 years and is now in charge of special operations. He said that their response to calls is different to the Coast Guard.
“If we get a notification, we immediately go,” Ball said. “Often, they rely on our input immediately. So we'll send our boat right to the site, or where we think where we're going, and we'll relay that information to our central dispatch, who then will relay it to the Coast Guard.”
He said that false calls for water-related incidents happen about 25-30 times a year, with some happening during ice fishing season. However, false calls are more common for their EMS instead, which has a false call rate of 20% to 30% of responses, according to Ball.
“An example would be that somebody is lying down in the park, and if somebody's driving by and sees someone lying down in the park, they may call 911 and say, ‘hey, this guy doesn't look good,’ and then just keep driving,” he explained. “That does again generate a response from us and ties up resources, where if you can take the time to go and figure out if there is a true emergency or not.”
Ball also added that EMS responds to more than 80% of their calls, “like most departments.” With the strain of false calls on the service, he said that people should take the time to gather more information, especially in the Traverse City summers.
“Take your time to gather good information and that will help us respond more appropriately,” he said.
