National Emergency Telecommunicators Week is this week. It's a tough time for emergency services this year, so I figured I should write something original, to talk about the times we live in.
But I didn't, so part of this is an update to a blog I wrote in 2017. (I wonder if anyone would have noticed? Too late.)
In 1991, after an unfortunate encounter with a teething baby, a
Congressman from Delaware became the very first person to yell, "What's
the number for 911?"
Okay, I was kidding about the baby: He just wanted to complain that the
Congressional Dining Room coffee had gone cold. Still, he made a basic
mistake that led to a delayed emergency response: He tried to dial "nine
eleven".
In an effort to get the word out that the number for 911 is
"nine one one", Congress declared the second full week in April to be
National Public Safety Telecommunications Week. (They declared the third
full week of April to be Teething Baby Awareness Week.)
Indiana made that same declaration in 1999, and this year it's April 12-18. That's why, being a public safety telecommunicator
myself, I tried to take that week off.
I mean, it was my week, right? Daiquiris in Hawaii for all dispatchers!
But it turns out emergency dispatch centers have to be manned 24 hours a
day, something they didn't tell me when I signed on.
(Okay, it's possible they did tell me that. It was twenty-eight years
ago--and while I haven't slept
well since then, I have slept.)
Personally, I would have called it Emergency Dispatchers Week. It's not
quite as accurate, but it's shorter. But no Congressman ever used one
word, when a paragraph would do. In bigger dispatch centers, one dispatcher might take 911
calls, another might page out ambulances, a third radio police, a forth
may be dedicated to fire departments, and so on. In a smaller dispatch
center (like mine), the dispatcher might do all those.
They might also enter calls into the computer, do other computer work like
arrest warrants, stolen vehicle calls and missing persons reports, run
licenses for traffic stops, and take business line calls. They might empty
the trash, make coffee, and operate the security doors for the county
or city jails. They might set off the local tornado sirens (hopefully
during tornado warnings). They might enter missing person and Amber Alert reports into national
databases, try to talk down suicidal people, or talk
somebody through doing CPR on their loves ones. They might have to do any
combination of the above at the same time.
So "dispatcher" doesn't really cover it.
Part of the time you don't really need all the people who work in a
dispatch center. The rest of the time you need three times as many.
Sadly, no one has yet come up with a way to predict which time will fall
at which--well--time. But there are certain ways to tell if it's going
to get busy:
If you just heated up your meal.
If there's a full Moon, regardless of what the research "experts" say.
If some moron just said, "Say, it's been quiet tonight".
If you just realized your bladder is screaming at you to take a break.
In the emergency services, breaks are just an obscure theory. They're
best taken at the dispatch console, with a microwave nearby. My record
for reheating soup is eight times, but hey--I'm a slow eater, anyway.
When 911 calls you away from that already lukewarm chimichanga, it might
be to help someone whose little toe has been hurting for three days.
Or, it might be that you're about to become the very last person someone
ever talks to. Not knowing is a large part of the stress.
I'm told the average career length for a 911 dispatch is 7-10 years,
give or take. If you do it longer than 10 years, you qualify as legally
insane. I've done it for more than twice that long.
In that time, some of the really serious stuff has actually been the easiest.
Your house is on fire? Send the fire department. You're having chest
pains? Send an ambulance. Many of my least favorite calls come in on the
non-emergency line, and start with "Can I ask you a question?" In my
business, there's a fine line between "question" and "complaint", but
either way it's bound to end up being one of those head scratchers.
There's also the fact that many 911 calls aren't emergencies, and sometimes business line calls are.
So yeah, I think it's great that people in this job get a week of their
own--they earned it. Last year we got a lot of attention, from individuals, businesses, and organizations that not only thanked us, but showered us with free food and gifts ... which is very cool, because according to the research I just did, my household is holding onto the lower edge of middle class income by our fingernails. This year, with the coronavirus and general ick going on, I don't think we even advertised our upcoming week.
You have to be careful with those treats, anyway. Two years ago I brought a great treat bag home, and the dog ate it. But has he taken a single 911 call? Noooooo......
