The Emporia Gazette

May 28, 2012

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They’re like the elves who helped the cobbler. No one sees them, but they give help night and day to people who need an ambulance, a police officer, a firefighter and, after hours and on weekends, even underground utilities workers to turn off an erupting water pipe.

During April, they’re celebrating National 911 Education Month and, this week, National Telecommunicators Week.

“It’s a fancy word for dispatcher,” said Roxanne VanGundy, dispatcher and 911 public education training officer for the Emporia Police Department.

VanGundy has presented training programs for Emporia schoolchildren to educate them on how to handle emergencies and to give them the confidence to call for help when needed. She is preparing for a series of programs for elderly and disabled people who also seem reluctant to call.

The new program lets children and the rest of the community know that dispatchers are always ready to be a conduit to emergency workers.

EPD’s dimly lit dispatch center holds four terminals, four screens and two screens that split into different images for the cameras that record inside and outside the department, as well as in the garage in the basement. Recorders, mobile data terminals, pagers to call out fire, parking enforcement and water department employees, maps and Open Fox, a relatively new system that provides information the old National Crime Information Computers used to provide.

VanGundy became a dispatcher about two and a half years ago and it’s not something she’d want to give up.

“I tell people who want to be a dispatcher to give it a lot of thought. It’s really … a life-changing job,” VanGundy said. “If you can give up that amount of time, it’s a great job.”

VanGundy and others like her have the patience and cool-headedness to calm frightened callers while they gather the information to aid the callers and keep the law-enforcement officers and firefighters safe and informed.

That requires asking questions that sometimes annoy the callers, whose priority is knowing that help is on the way. Dispatchers need to know more.

“We paint a picture, kind of, with the information that we get,” said Krystee Pearson, dispatch supervisor.

Are weapons involved? Is the intruder still in the house? Are children present? Is the patient bleeding? Unresponsive? Dispatchers also find it useful to know the history of the caller or address involved.

“How many times have we been there and their history?” Pearson said. “That can tell a lot about some people when you don’t have very much to go on.”

“We ask questions for a reason, not just to keep you on the phone,” VanGundy said, beginning to explain the protocol inside the dispatch room.

Callers often do not realize that while one dispatcher is getting detailed information — whether it’s about a burglary in progress or an unresponsive patient in need of an ambulance — another dispatcher already has the police or emergency medical workers en route to the address. The questions make a difference in whether responders go in well-prepared or arrive at the scene not knowing anything more than the address.

“They’re already getting the ambulance started,” she said. “I think that’s a real common misconception, that we don’t start the ambulance until afterwards.”

The questions are more comprehensive for medical calls, when providing answers can mean the difference between life and death.

The questions are read in order from the Emergency Medical Dispatch book, a flip-through indexed book that provides appropriate responses based on the answers given. Each caller initially is asked the same set of questions to determine what type of medical situation the EMTs will encounter. As the questions become more in-depth and the answers narrow down the problem, the book refers the dispatcher to other sections with additional questions to help learn the condition of the patient and the type of medical emergency he or she faces.

The caller’s answers help dispatchers assign a severity level to the call and lets EMS know, for example, what type of medical equipment they need to pull from the ambulance immediately to begin treatment.

“They require us to ask those questions in a certain way,” VanGundy said, “in order for us to come up with a severity level. … Sometimes people don’t give us the information. I know people don’t always understand that.”  Pearson said that dispatchers give callers tasks to perform, such as putting dogs away in another room. The chores not only get their minds off the emergencies, but also help prepare the scene for responders.

VanGundy said she tries to think ahead.

“If I was an officer, what would I need to know?” she said. “I try to get all the information to protect the officer and the public. You want to put yourself in their shoes.”

The EPD dispatch center also has the system for 911 calls for the city and the county.

Not every 911 call is an emergency, of course; children playing with phones are a frequent source, as are adults who do not realize that non-emergency calls need to go through the regular telephone line.

Other 911 calls come from people who may be lonely or confused or need help when no one else is available.

“I’ve learned if I have a minute, I’m going to talk to them,” VanGundy said. “… Maybe they don’t have someone who cares about them in their life. I’m glad to be that person.”

Dispatchers have referred callers to offices where they can get help, Pearson said, and occasionally they’ve called L-CAT for people who need rides to doctor’s appointments.

Some callers become almost like regular customers for the dispatchers, even though they’ve never met.

“It’s strange,” Pearson said, “when you go to Wal-Mart and you hear a voice and you look around, and you put a face with a voice.”

VanGundy had been with EPD only a few months when she answered a 911 call that was a genuine life-or-death emergency. A baby had stopped breathing and the parents lived too far out of town to drive in to the hospital in time.

“I had just started working 911 and I was just scared to death,” VanGundy said.

She relied on the explicit directions in the Emergency Medical Dispatch Book and gave the parents step-by-step instructions on how to perform CPR.

“Everything worked out. That was an adrenaline rush. I followed the cards and it worked out … and she started breathing again,” she said. “That was probably the scariest and best call.”

Occasionally, 911 callers bring amusement to the dispatch center, where GPS-type equipment is in place. With it, dispatchers are able to use X-Y coordinates to locate the caller and, if necessary, track them wherever they go.

 “We had somebody (a wanted person) call in once and say, ‘You can’t catch me,’” VanGundy said. “And I thought, ‘Yes, I can.’”

And, with the help of police officers, she did.

Sheriff’s Office  At the Lyon County Sheriff’s office, dispatchers’ jobs take somewhat different turns because of the environment and the rural area commonly covered. They often spend more time on the phone with callers while deputies drive for miles to reach a call, and sometimes only one dispatcher is on-duty.

“If we have a deputy on the north end of the county and we have a call on the south end of the county, it takes a little longer,” said Diana Deeds, dispatch supervisor and administrative supervisor for the Lyon County Sheriff’s office. “I think it is very stressful, because they’re trying to keep the person calm, they’re trying to keep themselves calm, and reassure them that help is on the way.”

Deeds recalled a domestic case in which a victim had run from the house, leaving the suspect inside. The victim was moving almost continuously — hiding behind the barn, beside the car, among the bushes — in an effort to hide from her attacker. The dispatcher needed to track her movements so when the deputy arrived, he would know what area to avoid in case of a confrontation with the suspect.

“They’ve got to keep in mind all the time there are other phones ringing and people coming to the window,” Deeds said.

The sheriff’s eight dispatchers, located behind a window that overlooks the jail’s booking area, watch monitors that give not only a full view of booking, but a look at hallways, cell pods, visiting cubicles and the areas in front and back of the building.

The accidents called in from county roads and federal highways frequently involve serious or fatal injuries.

“There’s always somewhere in the back of your mind, wondering if that next call is going to be a family member,” Deeds said.