CELEBRATING OUR TELECOMMUNICATORS!

Each year, the second full week of April is dedicated to the men and women who serve as Public Safety Telecommunicators.  This year it’s April 13-19.  (In Durham, you can send letters of appreciation to Durham Emergency Communications Center, 505 West Chapel Hill Street, Durham, NC 27701.  If it is easier, you can e-mail notes to 911week@echap.org and we will forward those to the center.)

Telecommunicators probably have the least glamorous job in Public Safety.  They are seldom heard by the public and never seen.  Day after day they answer the phones and dispatch help with little fanfare.  The only time they get media coverage is when they make a mistake—and the news hounds jump on that like a dog on a ham bone.

The training process for a new telecommunicator can take up to a year and each month requires a full day of continuing education training.  It’s a lot to learn and a lot to keep up with.

It’s a very stressful job, too.  When answering incoming calls, a telecommunicator is often expected to be psychic—to take screamed, unintelligible words and somehow magically make a police car, ambulance or fire truck show up at a location that is unknown even to the caller.

Chaos is a word well known to every telecommunicator.  It happens most every day.  Sometimes several times in a day.  Some days it happens all day long.

Even a minor wreck on the interstate can cause chaos in the center.  Imagine that 50 people witness a wreck on I-40.  All 50 people call at one time.  25 of them are headed East.  25 are headed West.  None of them know exactly where they are and most don’t even know their own direction of travel. None of the callers currently on the line stopped to check on injuries.  When the ones who did stop and get a chance to call they can’t get through because all the lines are tied up with people telling the communicators what exit they are passing three miles down the road.

On one side of the room there might be several call takers trying desperately to get useful information simultaneously about the same event.  On the other side of the room there might be Police, Fire and EMS units yelling for more information about the location of the very same event the call takers are still working on.

It all happens fast.  One minute things are under control and the next minute it seems as if the world is coming to an end.  But it doesn’t.  The telecommunicators always get the job done and help always arrives.  They never get the thanks they deserve but we at Emergency Chaplains want to give a shout out to our Telecommunicators—our 9-1-1 Operators—they are the best in the world.

We love you guys!  Thanks for being the first in line of our First Responders and THANK YOU for always answering the calls and making sure that we get the help we need, when we need it and where we need it.