Video: 911 Dispatchers React To MUW Drill

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COLUMBUS, Miss. (WCBI) — Fires, storms, accidents, chemical spills… fire, police, paramedics all rush to respond… but there’s sometimes a group that’s overlooked. But many times, they are the glue that keeps all the moving parts working together. And they often are the first voice of comfort to victims. Today, Lowndes County’s entire emergency response apparatus got a chance to test itself.

“Well, we have to be ready pretty much at anytime, so we just handle it like it was a real situation,” said Shalonda Singleton, the dispatch supervisor.

Even though it was only a drill, when word went out at about 8:00 Thursday morning of a fire in a dorm at MUW, Lowndes county 9-1-1 dispatchers had to act like it was real.

“There were several victims. Later after we received the initial call, we got other calls saying that there was a bomb and different things in the building, so they want to look out for people with bombs. Some had bombs, some had bombs strapped to them. So we got everybody going, fire department, law enforcement, ambulance service, ” said Singleton.

It is an extreme test of the challenges emergency dispatchers face every day…coordinating response, keeping track of police, fire, rescue and other responders… making sure they too are safe.

“Our main goal is getting the pertinent information as to is anyone is hurt, where they are, so we can get people to them. We want to get everyone on scene as needed, fire department, ambulance and everything. Pretty much once they get on scene, they set up a command center and everything goes from there,” said Singleton.

The practice is a good chance for everyone to evaluate how they work as individuals and as a team.

“It’s good for us. We basically do everything that we would in a real scenario and each agency will give us feed back on what we can do to improve, if there was any lack of communication, where it was and how we can make things better,” said Singleton.

The drill lasted more than two hours and involved the FBI, Columbus Air Force Base, bomb personnel, and other agencies as well as Columbus and Lowndes County first responders.

Categories: Crime, Local News

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