Many jurisdictions require a person engaged in a call on a party line to end the call immediately if another party needs the line for an emergency. Such laws also provide penalties for abuse by falsifying emergency situations. In May 1955, a Rhinebeck, New York woman was indicted by a grand jury after her refusal to relinquish a party line delayed a volunteer firefighter's effort to report a grass fire; the fire destroyed a shed and a barn. She was given a suspended sentence. In June 1970, a sixteen-year-old girl and a woman were charged after refusing to relinquish a party line to allow a distress call as three boys drowned in a pond in Walsenburg, Colorado.