The calm during the storm

Imagine having a bad day, not so hard to imagine for most of us I’m sure. Work was rough, the spouse or the kids, the neighbor, the dog, something’s gone wrong and it has us in a foul mood. Now imagine your bad day just took an even worse turn and something has happened, to you, to a loved one, a car accident, a sudden illness, an injury – and you find yourself faced with something many never have to even once in their lifetime – you have to call 911. Your heart is racing, your adrenaline is pumping, you are trying to figure out how it all went so wrong so fast and you have no idea what to do. You dial the number and a voice comes on the line…

“911, what is your emergency…”

You are so panicked, so scared, so unsure, and trying to tell them as fast as you can to please, just send help! But as panicked as you are, the voice on the other end of the line remains calm and begins to ask you questions – where are you, what is your name, what you can you tell me about what happened. The questions seem like they are coming too fast, but really, they aren’t. And what seems like an eternity later, but is really only a matter of seconds, they tell you help is on the way, just stay on the line and they continue to talk to you – quietly, calmly, remaining completely level headed and talking you through anything they can assist you with. Some of your fear and your panic could start to seep away a little bit as that calm voice continues to talk to you until help arrives. Then you realize help has arrived, police, fire, ambulance crews are on the scene and you hang up with 911.

Even after you hang up, the dispatcher remains alert, waiting to hear from the emergency crews they just sent to your aid to see if they need something more, someone more. In your darkest of hours, there is someone, sitting beside a radio, beside a phone, beside a computer, ready to send aid to you and to be there as support if needed to those in the field.

When it’s all over, you may remember the police officers, the fire fighters, the ambulance crew who were there, on the scene responding in your time of need. Maybe, just maybe, you will also remember the calm voice who was there with you waiting until they arrived.

Recently during City Council meetings discussions were had about raising the pay grade of the Communications Supervisor at the Cameron Police Department, several people, including Police Advisory Board member Quentin Lovejoy and City Councilman L. Corey Sloan spoke up and said few can imagine or appreciate the tremendous job dispatchers do. So I went to talk with some of the dispatchers at the Police Station about exactly what their jobs do entail.

There is perhaps the impression that all a dispatcher does is sit and answer calls and dispatch emergency services. Dispatchers, as well as answering calls, also have many administrative duties – especially in a smaller department like Cameron. Just a few of Communications Supervisor Cathy Poindexter’s  duties include helping the records clerk; 911 coordinator – which includes being certain addresses are verified and correct; terminal agency coordinator – liaison between police and highway patrol for background checks and training of dispatchers, dispatchers are required to have fingerprint background checks – and the department is audited every two years, in charge of files to be sure they are compliant; being certain all the systems in the department are up to date and moving forward. Other dispatchers in the center work as security officers to be certain the correct controls are in place, validation officers to be certain everything in the Missouri Uniform Law Enforcement System (MULES) is up to date and verified. Those are just a few of the administrative duties of dispatchers.

Training for dispatchers in Cameron begins with 6-8 weeks in house in Cameron, then they move on to training with the Missouri State Highway Patrol for a week to have access to MULES – which is where they can check criminal histories, check drivers licenses, etc. Then there is an additional 40 hour week training for call taking to make dispatchers calm and comfortable in their jobs and to let them get the understanding of the state and federal standards for call taking. It is weeks and weeks of training – but it is on the job and by the time the training is over, the hope is the dispatcher will be confident to do the job. The mandates are for eight hours of training every three years, MULES training, and medical training – including CPR every two years. The dispatchers in our area actually attend more training – such as specialized training to speak with suicidal subjects, intoxicated subjects, or domestic situations, as a few examples, although it is not mandated it is all geared toward being as prepared as they possibly can.

Another thing Cathy says the department is proactive about is if they know there will be a big event such as an air show, they have table top scenarios, where someone outside the agency comes in to give them scenarios that could happen to walk through and discuss how they would respond and react long before the event ever occurs. Once the event is over, they come back to discuss when went right and what went wrong and what they would have done differently.

“I look at this like a professional sports team, we train, we practice, and then we go out there and perform, we do our jobs, then we come back in and we review what we did and we try to make things better,” Assistant Communication Supervisor Stan Hendrix said. “We continuously go through that cycle. I see us as the quarterback – we play on every play. Our job is to take that ball, take that call and we have to decide instantly where the best place for that ball is and give it to the most appropriate responder. Our job is to intuitively take that call and decide what can we do to make the response to their call the easiest and best.”

Besides the many administrative duties, and the biggest part of their job - they are there for public safety and helping others, and making sure the responders are safe while doing the job – they dispatch for fire, ems, police, code enforcement and animal control.

There are days there isn’t much going on – and there are days its zero to sixty and there may be only one dispatcher. In larger cities there can be call takers and dispatchers, in the rural communities like Cameron, they are both the call taker and the dispatcher.

Cathy says last year there was an ice event early in the winter with a lot of calls due to slick roads, she was the only dispatcher in the center that day and Stan happened to come in on what was supposed to be his day off. Cathy worked an 18 hour shift that day and Stan worked at least 12. There were more calls than they could keep up with. They had even pushed their center to the limits, the calls were coming in so fast they simply couldn’t answer them fast enough, and they didn’t have enough resources in police, fire, or ems to send out on all the calls.

“Sometimes we have the idle time and sometimes we have no time at all,” Cathy said.

“Some people have the perception we answer phones and we send officers to stuff, but in the reality, we might be sitting here not real busy and then you get a call of an individual in distress you send officers too and the situation changes within minutes. You think it’s a routine call that we have so many of so often, police officers get on the scene and it changes to shots fired.” Cathy said

While they are busy dispatching the police, fire, and ems, they are also there to assure the caller that help is on the way and give pre-arrival instructions. All the Dispatchers are trained to give instructions on how to administer cpr, how to handle child birth, bee stings, and any number of situations.

“What helps is you have a script, and no matter how many calls you have, you have a script you can follow,” Stan said. The program is called Emergency Medical Dispatch and part of Cathy’s job is to be certain all the dispatchers in the area are trained in how to use the system. It is not a state mandate, but in rural areas it can make a big difference when emergency services can be farther away.

The dispatchers are very humble about what they do however, “911 stops ringing as soon as flashing lights are on the scene,” Stan said.

Cathy said their stress is 9-10 minutes and then for the most part it is over and the stress is more on the responders on the scene. Those responders are their friends, their colleagues, their neighbors, and in a lot of ways, their family.

“Our job is to get help to people who need it, our priority is to ensure responder safety,” Stan said. “Once you’ve done that and the whole thing is over, it’s nice to see them walk through the door and know they are ok.”

Sometimes responders can also share a little bit of detail about what happened to the people involved in the call as well – there isn’t much they can share, but they can say, they made it, they’re going to be ok.

“For us as Dispatchers, it is wonderful to have the support we have from the department,” Cathy said.

In a general sense, when it comes to calling 911, Stan said the most important information a caller can give is where.

“If someone is going to call 911, I’m going to expect you to tell me where and then we want to know what’s going on and then I want to know safety – so I can keep my responders safe when they are responding. Once we get that information, then we can dispatch services. We have to switch from the sympathetic call takers to the professional dispatchers on the radio with the responders to get the help going to them as quickly as possible,” Stan said.

According to Cathy it is not unusual to walk into the Dispatch center and see them on the radio, the phone, and the computer all at the same time. 

The camaraderie of the emergency services is not limited to Cameron, but they often see times when there is a call in Cameron and other agencies in the area, the counties, the Missouri Highway Patrol, will simply show up to see if their assistance is needed, without even having had to be called, because they have such a great working relationship with those other departments.

“We’re very lucky with our dispatch center we have, I’m very proud of them,” Police Chief Rick Bashor said. 

Often when people call in, they are having their worst day and it is difficult for people to be patient with dispatchers, but the dispatchers are trying to get them the help they need and they are multitasking very quickly, Chief Bashor said that is one of the only things he would ask people to try to remember, even though you might be having your worst day, try to be patient, the dispatchers are working quickly to get the assistance you need to you.

So if you ever find yourself having the worst day of your life and you have to hear that voice on the other end of a 911 call, try to remember, to send you help, they need information, and most importantly - location, location, location.