LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Almost anyone who learns their house has been severely damaged by a tornado is allowed to clock out and go home, but not Katrina Gutwein, a 9-1-1 telecommunicator who helped others for nearly two hours after being informed her house was damaged. “We have caller ID on our consoles,” she said as she recounts the afternoon of Nov. 17 when tornadoes ripped through the area. “Shortly after (the storms) came through, I could see my husband’s phone calling in.

“My family doesn’t bother me when I’m at work. So when my phone starts ringing, I knew it was serious. You answer it long enough to find out what happened.”

Gutwein was powerless to help her husband because of the onslaught of 9-1-1 calls, which blocked calls on nonemergency lines. As Gutwein tells the story, it sounds more like a dispatcher talking to a stranger than a wife talking to her husband.

“He made the comment that we had been hit,” she told the Journal & Courier. “I said, ‘How bad?’

“He said, ‘Bad.’

“I asked if he and the animals were OK, and he said, ‘Yes.’

“I said, ‘Do you need the ambulance or fire department?’

“He said, ‘I don’t think so.’

“I said, ‘I’ll be home when I can get home.'”

Then she hung up, not knowing the extent of the damage.

“You’ve got to shut it off. It’s just so busy, you don’t have a choice,” she said. “I had to stay here until we got staffing in to relieve. As soon as the first person got in, I got out of there.”

That dedication often is unseen by the public, but it’s expected in those who want to be telecommunicators, said Mike Franklin, supervisor of communications for Lafayette police and fire departments. The emotional angst dispatchers deal with each time there is an emergency, while not personal like Gutwein’s Nov. 17 shift, takes a toll on calltakers. Often you can hear the stress in their voice or the empathy for the person on the other end of the line.

This professionalism is one reason Sunday through Saturday is designated in Indiana as public safety telecommunications week.

“It’s like anyone else down there would have done,” Franklin said. “It’s above and beyond, but it’s what we accept and take when we fill that role. The public takes first (priority).

We can’t just get up.”

“I’ve gone in this business 20 years,” Gutwein said. “You worry, but you’re so busy that you don’t really have a choice but to keep plugging along.”

“Katrina accepted that as her task, and she did it until she was able to go,” Franklin said.

About two hours after the storm hit, Gutwein headed home.

Arriving home, she learned that Chip had been in the garage with one of the couple’s two dogs. The dog looked at Chip, barked and whined: Chip took that as his cue to get inside.

“He got 10 foot in our kitchen door,” she said, “He got just in there, it sucked the bathroom door open. He watched the wall go, his garage go. All of it.

“He doesn’t remember the first several hours. He said, ‘I was in shock just going through the motions.'”

Five months later, the Gutweins’ lives are not back to normal.

“It’s just constant,” she said. “As most people who have been through this will say, it’s about a yearlong process to get stuff to where it is not your daily focus.”