BENTON – Recognizing National Public Safety Telecommunicator’s Week locally gives us an opportunity to recognize the unseen heroes – the voices behind the phones and radios in our local 911 center.
“You have to stay calm in the most critical of situations – not only for the caller but for your responders as well,” Marshall County 911 Director Misti Drew said of the difficulties dispatchers face on a daily basis. “You never know what you will be faced with when the phone rings or the radio is keyed up.”
Drew said in the time she has spent as Director at the local 911 center, she has seen dispatchers work under tremendous pressure, making life-saving decisions. “It’s not uncommon to come in to work and hear our dispatchers walking someone through CPR,” she said.
Dispatchers at Marshall County 911 complete a comprehensive background check and are all certified through the Department of Criminal Justice Training in Richmond. They must also complete annual and bi-annual certifications including Emergency Medical Dispatch and the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) to maintain employment with the center.
Marshall County 911 employs nine full-time dispatchers and two part-time. Drew said while there are most always two dispatchers on duty, a shift can quickly evolve from fielding routine administrative requests to answering a life or death call for help requiring all hands on deck.
“Our dispatchers do a great job of working together.” She said if possible, while one is on the line with the caller getting critical information and offering pre-arrival instructions, the other is paging out emergency response agencies and updating them as they are in route. She said while they always seem to handle it in stride, dealing with some of these situations can take its toll.
“I have come in to a solemn, quiet atmosphere and knew exactly what had happened before I even asked.” Losing someone on the other end of the line is something you never forget – especially if it is a child,” Drew said. “Just because the dispatcher isn’t physically there to see what is going on doesn’t mean they don’t live it.
“The sounds and the emotions – they don’t fade,” she said. “Some of our dispatchers have been on the phone with the caller who just witnessed their loved one being murdered, the caller who was frantically trying to save their child, the caller who whispered while hiding in a closet because someone was in their home and the caller who just wanted them to know, he would be taking his own life. They replay those calls over and over again and inevitably they ask, ‘could I have done anything to save them?’”
Drew said not only do dispatchers struggle with what they know; they also struggle with what they don’t. “There are a lot of times that you do not get closure. You share critical moments on the phone with someone and many times, you don’t know how the story ends.”
So what do Marshall County Dispatchers encounter during a typical shift at the Benton-based call center?
Drew said the day begins with a 6 a.m. shift where two dispatchers prepare to take on the day with a de-briefing from the midnight shift.
Dispatchers answer all non-emergency calls for service that come in on the five administrative lines of the center as well as two 911 lines. Dispatchers also field all radio communications for the county’s emergency response agencies and log every call and all responder activity in the center’s Computer Aided Dispatch System known as CAD.
It is not uncommon for the Marshall County Dispatch Center to dispatch several multi-agency incidents in a 24-hour period. Injury accidents typically involve at least three emergency response agencies and can range up to nearly a dozen being dispatched depending on the severity of the incident.
On any given day, the call center fields roughly just under 300 calls, 600 radio communications and dispatches approximately 100 calls for service including approximately a dozen ambulance calls ranging from requests for patient transfers to unresponsive patients requiring immediate CPR.
“It’s safe to say that Marshall County Dispatchers have directly assisted in helping to save the lives of thousands of callers in the 25-year history of the service. They truly are the unseen heroes of emergency response,” Drew said. “They are the caller’s lifeline until someone physically arrives on scene and each and every one of our dispatchers here takes that responsibility very seriously.”
Marshall County E-911 dispatches for nine different fire departments, three law enforcement agencies including Benton and Calvert Police as well as the MC Sheriff’s Office, Emergency Management, the Marshall County Rescue Squad, EMS, Animal Control, Marshall County First Responders and Red Cross. We also dispatch via mutual agreements for agencies such as KSP, Park Rangers, Fish and Wildlife, etc. when they are assisting in-county.
Marshall County 911 also dispatches numerous other agencies to scenes including the Road Department, State Highway Department, Utility Companies, Air Medical and the Refuse Department among others.
“This week during National Telecommunicator’s Week, we would like to extend a special thanks to each and every dispatcher that makes this center so successful,” Drew said. “I could not be more proud of the men and women who work tirelessly for their community and for the responders – those who often go unrecognized for their heroic efforts. While they don’t do this job for the recognition, I hope telling their story reminds the community of just how valuable they are and helps each dispatcher to realize how vital their role is in the field of emergency response in the county.”
Thank you to our dispatchers: Andrea Howe, Anita Ford, Rachael Opiola, Sheila Day, Vallery West, Tonya
Clevidence, Katrina Ellington, Chandler Sirls, Philip Madison and Lisa Farias.