HOT weather and World Cup fever resulted in ambulance crews facing one of their busiest weekends on record. On Saturday, 892 people called the East Anglian Ambulance Service, with peaks of demand coming about an hour after the final whistle for the Englan

HOT weather and World Cup fever resulted in ambulance crews facing one of their busiest weekends on record.

On Saturday, 892 people called the East Anglian Ambulance Service, with peaks of demand coming about an hour after the final whistle for the England v Paraguay game and again at around 11pm.

Director of operations Rob Lawrence said: "Between 5pm and midnight we saw an increase in calls of 44 per cent over an average Saturday, with many of those calls drink-related.

"The number of assaults was up 50 per cent on the previous Saturday, while we also saw a large number of calls from people who had simply had too much to drink in the hot weather.

"Unless people take in plenty of water the alcohol is going to dehydrate them quite seriously in the heat and leave them in a bad way."

On Sunday, the service received 851 calls and by the end of the weekend it had clocked up the second busiest week ever.

Mr Lawrence said: "The sheer volume of calls can obviously have a knock-on effect on how quickly we can respond to incidents, and the more minor assaults and drunken incidents we are called to the less resources we have available to deal with potentially serious incidents.