Each Call Is Different But 911 Dispatchers Handle Them All The Same

MONROE COUNTY, Miss. (WCBI) – Today is National Day of Service and Remembrance.

It’s a day to honor those who lost their lives on September 11, 2001 and to honor our every day heroes.

First responders are everyone’s unsung heroes.

When we think of first responders, we think of firefighters, law enforcement, and ambulance crews, but many may forget about the ones who are the first to hear about an  emergency.

“Monroe 911, what’s your emergency?”

“They’re your first responders. They hear everything and what’s bad is there’s so much that goes on that they hear and then when they pass the call off, they don’t know how the story ends,” says Monroe County EMA and 911 Director, Donna Sanderson.

Each call is different.

“Mam, mam. Calm down for me, okay? No, no. Do not go back in the house. We will get somebody to get your dog.”

But dispatchers have to handle every call the same.

They’re taught to be the calming voice.

“A lot of times, in a panic situation, those first responders on scene cannot be very calming. It’s very, you know, go into action. We are the calm. We are the it’s okay. It’s going to be okay. We’re doing what we’re supposed to be doing. You’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing. Protecting, you know, our callers as best as we can,” says Monroe County 911 Dispatcher Jessica Gray.

That training starts before dispatchers even get behind the phone.

Gray says they’re trained to hear things that the caller isn’t even necessarily saying.

“If there is somebody screaming in the background, you’re trained for little things like that, so it’s a lot of role-playing that they do and we sit around and we play the what if game. So what if a plane crashes? What if a bus crashed? Or what if this happened? What if that happened? So, that’s how we’re trained. We are taught to know, okay, you’ve got to be prepared for the what if’s and the horrible days.”

Brenda McCullough has been a dispatcher for 25 years and she says there’s one call she’ll never forget.

“The lady called in about her baby, couldn’t breathe, and she had the baby close enough to the phone that I heard the baby gasping for air and then I couldn’t breathe, and that to this day, it’s still with me, you know, just trying to help the baby breathe.”

Both dispatchers want everyone to know they’re on the other end of the line to help.

They encourage callers to be patient with them and to trust what they say because they’re doing everything they can to get them the help they need.

“As soon as they’ll hang up, they’ll call right back and say, ‘I called 10-15 minutes ago.’ And I’m like, ‘I’m sorry sweetheart, it’s only been like two minutes, but they’re on their way in now.’ So the longer we can keep them on the line while the responders are en-route, it helps a lot.”

The dispatchers want to encourage everyone in Monroe County to post their addresses for responders to find.

They also want to remind emergency callers to designate only one person to call 911 about their emergency.