9-1-1 Dispatchers: The Calm During the Storm
Lisa Lugrain answered a phone call from a woman who was screaming and hysterical. Despite her best efforts, Lugrain couldn’t get the woman to calm down enough to speak clearly before the line disconnected.It’s not the first phone call like this for Lugrain, who works as a dispatcher for the Dubuque 9-1-1 Emergency Communications Center, which is housed in the Dubuque Law Enforcement Center. Through a second call, Lugrain was able to find out that there was a domestic disturbance and dispatched officers to the location.”Those calls are hard,” she said. “If you can’t tell us what’s happening, we don’t know how to help.”
Dubuque’s 9-1-1 center employs 17 dispatchers; five are part-time employees, including Lugrain. Julie Rooney, a lead dispatcher who has been with the department for 15 years, has handled a wide variety of calls from people dealing with some of the most stressful moments of their lives. Sometimes, those people will take out their fear and anger on dispatchers. “People are calling us at their worst moment,” Rooney said. “You have to consider that it’s not personal – that person is just venting – but it’s still really hard.” The dispatchers handle calls that range from quirky to tragic, and while they have training to handle almost any emergency, it’s impossible to stem their emotions entirely, they said. Rooney said many of the more difficult calls relate to a dispatcher’s personal experience. Calls related to farm accidents hit her harder because her sister is a farmer. She also recalled taking a 9-1-1 call from a friend whose mother had a heart attack. She had to coach her friend on medical care until paramedics arrived. “Everyone is somebody’s someone,” she said. Life in ‘the box’ The scene inside the 9-1-1 center can look chaotic to an outsider. As many as four simultaneous conversations about emergencies can be heard, with scanner chatter and alarm noises adding to the din. But the dispatchers are long accustomed to multitasking. They deftly switch from telephone conversations to radioing codes and locations to officers and firefighters to conversations with each other. Lights above each dispatch console show when a dispatcher is answering a phone call or talking over the radio. “It takes a while to get used to it,” Rooney said. The center also has television screens displaying security camera footage from inside the Dubuque Law Enforcement Center as well as traffic cameras mounted around the city of Dubuque. The camera footage is handy for dispatchers to view a crash scene or the location of a call, allowing them to relay that information to officers or emergency responders. Emergency Communications Manager Mark Murphy said the 9-1-1 center handles calls for all of the Dubuque County law enforcement agencies and fire departments, and the types of calls split up depending on the shift. On a full four-person night shift, one person handles dispatch for Dubuque police, one for all fire calls in the county, one for the Dubuque County Sheriff’s Department and other county police departments and one to answer phone calls and handle overflow dispatching. Those separations tend to become looser on extremely busy nights. “It’s hit or miss,” Lugrain said. “Sometimes, it’s not that busy; other times, it’s anything and everything going on.” Murphy said severe weather can be a very hectic time at the center. He highlighted how the dispatchers were inundated with calls during the recent heavy rainfalls that caused some streets to flood. Along with handling communications, the dispatchers also have a fair amount of paperwork to deal with, such as processing and updating warrants, no-contact orders and concealed-carry licenses. Officers and deputies also will drop by the center to ask questions and listen to recordings of 9-1-1 calls. Working 10-hour shifts together in the close quarters with limited break time, the dispatchers have become very close, said dispatcher Brenda Hernandez. She describes it like a family, especially when the group has to share holidays together, eating a potluck at their desks. They invite officers also on duty during the holidays to join in on their meals. “We know everything about each other’s husbands and kids, even if we’ve only met them a couple of times,” she said. Quirky calls Along with the usual medical or emergency calls, the dispatchers field plenty of calls that are quirky, funny or just plain weird. On a recent night at the center, a call came in about ducklings trapped in a Dubuque storm drain, with the mother nearby quacking frantically. Officers were able to rescue all four ducklings. When asked, it’s hard for the dispatchers to even pick a few stories to share. “There’s so many,” Rooney said. “We can’t make these up.” Rooney and Hernandez both talked about the number of calls they get reporting UFO sightings, usually with multiple calls on the same “spaceship.” Lugrain said dispatchers also take a significant amount of calls from people complaining about parking issues in their neighborhoods, such as a vehicle parked in the same spot on the street for more than a day. “People get irate about parking,” she said. Rooney said there also are regular calls from people who are suffering from mental illness or who might just be lonely. While a few can be abusive calls, many just want to chat with the dispatchers. She said that if they have time, the dispatchers can talk for a minute or so before they have to move on to other calls. Jessica Gamble said 9-1-1 calls for childbirth can be stressful but exciting—especially hearing the awe in the voice of new parents. “The dad said, ‘Look how precious she is,’ and I started bawling,” she said, recounting a call. Stressful situations But along with the calls that can bring a smile, there also are those that deeply affect the dispatchers. All agreed that 9-1-1 calls involving injured or ill children are among the hardest to take. “I remember when I was a year or two here, I got four choking baby calls in one month,” said Gamble, who has kids of her own. “Luckily, there were no fatalities, but I kept saying, ‘Why me?'” Murphy, who worked in dispatch for 11 years before he took over as manager, said his most significant shift was April 19, 1993. That day, an airplane carrying eight people, including South Dakota Gov. George Mickelson, crashed at a farm in rural Zwingle, Iowa, killing all on board. Rooney said it’s hard to stay composed on calls about injuries or dangerous situations for police officers and deputies. She brought up the example of Dubuque Police Department Lt. Scott Baxter being shot during a daytime armed robbery of Knickers Saloon in 2009. But she said dispatchers that keep their composure at those times helps reassure officers that help is coming. “It puts us in the position of a frantic caller, but we have to do our job,” she said. Calls for suicides and suicide attempts also often are tough. Lugrain said that, when she first started, she took a call from a mother who found her son after he shot himself. Lugrain had the difficult job of convincing the mother to check to see if she could still save her son. “She didn’t want to go back in the room, but I told her that there’s a chance he’s still alive,” Lugrain said. “He did actually make it.” Over time, Hernandez said, dispatchers begin to develop a “gut feeling” about calls that could be connected or if there’s something more to what a person is saying. Rooney gave an example of when she fielded a call about a stabbing victim, and a second call came in from a very close but different location. She then dispatched two ambulances to what turned out to be a double stabbing. Hernandez guessed that each dispatcher has probably cried at their station at least once following a stressful or tragic call. Rooney said if dispatchers aren’t too busy with calls, they can take a short break to walk around and get fresh air, but other times, they just have to move on to the next call. If a dispatcher is particularly affected by an incident, he or she can request a “debriefing” with a counselor and the officers involved to talk about the incident, Rooney said. They also sometimes can ask officers how a call turned out, but they try not to infringe on people’s privacy. The four said they try to leave work behind once their shifts are over – but it’s not always easy. Lugrain said she relieves the stress by working out, as well as relaxing on a couch to watch television. Hernandez said she and other dispatchers will joke around with each other to help ease tension. Her goal during shifts is to make everyone smile at least once. Gamble said it’s crucial not to internalize calls after each shift. “If you let everything emotional go to your head, this job will eat you alive,” Gamble said. Technology changes The 9-1-1 center looks a lot different than it did when Murphy started in 1988. He dispatched for the Dubuque County Sheriff’s Department, logging the progress of calls and complaints by hand with cards and time-clock punches. At that time, Dubuque police dispatch already moved to a computerized system, and the Sheriff’s Department dispatch followed suit. “Everything changes quickly and drastically in our area,” Murphy said of the new technology and procedures at the center. “What we buy today, in three years, we’re replacing.” He said technology advances for dispatchers have made response times faster and increased the information available to officers, firefighters and paramedics. Along with talking to officers and fire crews over the radio, dispatchers also can feed information to the laptops in squad cars and Fire Department vehicles. It’s a stark departure from when Murphy started. At that time, the various county law enforcement and fire departments could not communicate directly with each other over radios, delaying mutual aid time. Dispatchers now can advise callers on treatment for medical emergencies while paramedics are en route, thanks to regular training. Murphy said dispatchers previously were not trained to give advice on medical calls over the phone. The dispatch center also launched its Smart9-1-1 program in December. The program allows residents to voluntarily submit information such as medical history, the number of people living at a residence and physical layouts into a database that dispatchers and emergency responders can access when 9-1-1 calls come in. With regular upgrades in technology and policies, Murphy said, a lot of training is necessary for staff to keep up. Along with statewide training events, dispatchers receive monthly in-house training, including audio training in which experts critique how sample calls were handled and how changes could be made. “It’s really good training and starts a discussion on how they could handle the calls,” Murphy said. One technology advance that can be a nuisance is touch-screen cellphones, which can accidentally dial 9-1-1, oftentimes in a person’s pocket. Rooney said dispatchers still need to call that number back and treat it like a legitimate 9-1-1. Similarly, the dispatch center receives a lot of calls from old cellphones that parents give to children as toys. Murphy said even without a network provider, those phones are capable of dialing 9-1-1 if the battery still is charged. One of the next technology changes likely will be linked to texting. Murphy said the center is working to update its equipment to allow for texting to dispatchers, though the center still needs to wait on a statewide network setup with cellphone providers. Rooney said she is concerned with how dispatchers will react if someone texts a photograph of a tragic incident or medical emergency. “We hear it, but we never see what’s going on,” she said. “I’m worried about how that will affect dispatchers.” Murphy agreed that it could add more stress for dispatchers. Additionally, he said he heard the 9-1-1 center will not be able to determine a GPS location from a text, as it does with a cellphone call. He said it still would be preferable to call 9-1-1 about emergencies if possible in order to ensure the fastest response. Why do it? Full training to become a dispatcher takes about a year, a benchmark many do not hit. The Journal of Emergency Dispatch cites an annual job turnover rate of about 20 percent nationally for emergency communications staff. Murphy said the department has a pretty steady hold on its full-time dispatchers, who have worked for 5 to 30 years full time at the center. “We have a little bit of turnover in the part-time area, only because part-timers are looking for full-time positions,” Murphy said. While a high-stress job with odd hours isn’t for everybody, Rooney has worked for 15 years at the dispatch center. She earned her bachelor’s degree in criminal justice and wanted to move from the Quad Cities to Dubuque, so she took a dispatch position. “Shortly after I started, I knew it was a good fit,” she said. Others have law enforcement connections, too. Hernandez’s husband is a Dubuque police officer, and her father and brother also are in law enforcement. Lugrain said she originally wanted to become a police officer but could not make it through the training process because of a back injury. Gamble used to work at the Dubuque County Jail. After getting to know the 9-1-1 dispatchers, she decided to give it a try. Murphy started as a part-timer at the 9-1-1 center, thinking he would just work two years as a dispatcher. His stay in the job lasted several more years than that, he recalled. He came back to manage the 9-1-1 center in 2006 after about eight years with the Dubuque Fire Department. “There’s something new every day. It wasn’t the same old stuff,” Murphy said. “It was always exciting and a lot of fun.” Some dispatchers call their interactions with callers “customer service,” and while their questions might sound callous to an upset caller, the dispatchers want to have as much information as possible to figure out how best to help. After all, the dispatchers themselves still need to use 9-1-1 from time to time. Gamble and Lugrain said they still feel nervous when calling in an emergency situation, such as when they see a crash or intoxicated drivers after a late-night shift. Hernandez said when she calls 9-1-1 outside of the Dubuque area, she usually will not disclose that she is a fellow dispatcher. She uses it as a learning experience. “I’m curious to see how other agencies do it,” Hernandez said. “We all have to call in for things—you never know when your family needs help. I want to be treated as if I need help, and I expect to do that for other people as well.” |