Thurston County 911 Dispatch – Unsung Heroes of Emergency Response

thurston county 911
Randy Ross fields an incoming call at the Thurston County TCOMM Center
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By Laurie O’Brien

south sound trucksRandy Ross sits, surrounded by six computer screens, multiple phone lines, and a crew of people, each of whom is intently watching his or her work station and using a foot pedal to switch back and forth between the numerous conversations they are monitoring on headsets.

To say that what they are doing is an exercise in multi-tasking is to under-state the situation.

TCOMM is the Enhanced 9-1-1 Dispatch Center for all Police, Fire and Medic departments serving Thurston County. The people who work for TCOMM are masters at multi-tasking. They have to be. Lives often depend upon it.

thurston county 911
Randy Ross fields an incoming call at the Thurston County TCOMM Center

Ross has worked as a Public Safety Telecommunicator (dispatcher) for TCOMM for 27 years. For the past 11 he has been a supervisor. Many of the crew members he supervises are also veteran dispatchers. Ed Trevorrow has done this work for 20 years. “On the outside, you’re working one job at a time,” he says. Working dispatch is a different story. On this night, he is responsible for relaying calls to dozens of Thurston County Sheriff’s Office deputies. He thinks the nine “live” incidents he is monitoring at the moment is about average, maybe a little low. His primary job is to broadcast information from incoming calls to the officers in the field.

In the next cubicle, Angela Courter is dispatching to the Olympia Police Department. Courter has been with TCOMM for seven years and has finally found her rhythm in the job. “There is six weeks of classroom work,” she explains, “but it takes a good two years before you’re fully trained.”

Randy tells me that everyone who works TCOMM is cross-trained on both the Law Enforcement and Fire/Medic side. Everyone also learns how to be a call receiver, the person who speaks with citizens who call 9-1-1 for whatever reason. It is the receiver who determines which agency will respond to an emergency, and it is this person who stays on the line with the caller.

thurston county 911
Kelly Ditrich monitors calls for all Thurston County Fire Districts.

Courter thinks call receiving is probably the most difficult job in the room. “You have to be extra aware of your resources,” she explains. “A lot of times, when people don’t know who to call, they call 911.” Many times incoming calls aren’t real emergencies and dispatchers have to refer callers elsewhere. Sometimes “frequent flyers” call 9-1-1 multiple times a day with personal issues or repetitive calls. The dispatchers are often on a first name basis with these callers and recognize them by voice alone. Determining priority calls is the call receiver’s job.

As a supervisor, Ross often call receives when the lines are backed up. There are strict protocols for receiving calls, including a series of questions designed to determine where the incident is taking place and what responders might encounter when they get there. “Has anyone been drinking or using drugs?” and questions about weapons in the home are standard when police are dispatched to a situation involving domestic violence. All of the information gathered by the call receiver is relayed, via computer, to the appropriate dispatcher who then contacts the responding agency.

When there is imminent danger to life or property, dispatchers will stay on the line until agency personnel are on the scene. “The worst part of this job is the lack of closure,” says Ross.  When a dispatcher on the Fire/Medic side of the floor walks someone through CPR, they don’t always find out if the person made it. If they send police officers into a situation where gun shots have been fired, they may never know what the officers found. And while on-scene responders have to deal with tragic or horrifying situations first hand, “Your imagination is sometimes worse than what you see with your eyes,” he says. Calls involving children are especially distressing.

thurston county 911
Angela Courter confers with a fellow dispatcher.

While there are critical incident debriefings, Ross says that he has dealt with some calls that will haunt him for the rest of his life. He won’t share details, but he does say that even now, years later, one call in particular still makes the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.

Of course, there are also those situations that make the job worth it. He has talked more than one caller through childbirth.

Kelly Ditrich, another dispatcher with more than 20 years on the job, likes working the Fire/Medic One side of the floor. She also prefers to work nights because it’s busier and time passes more quickly. “There’s different activity on the day shift,” she says. Fritz Riddle, who is also working the fire side on this shift, agrees. “Night time is when the guns and knives come out,” he says. When there is imminent danger to life or property, the call takes on a different tone. Everyone agrees that more high priority calls come in at night.

There are many patterns. “Mid-October we’ll start our chimney fire season,” Darrell Wilson tells me. Starting around Memorial Day drowning calls start coming in, and in July and August grass and brush fires account for a high volume of calls.

thurston county 911On the TCOMM floor there are more beeps and alarms going off than on an emergency room floor. Every radio frequency has its own distinct tone. The 9-1-1 ring tone differs from the non-emergency number. In one corner, call receivers field incoming calls. In cubicles throughout the room, dispatchers are talking to the Thurston County Sheriff’s Office and every police department and fire district in the county. They’re monitoring their computers for incoming situations and they’re keeping track of their active calls. Everyone is also listening to the general hum in the room. If someone is actively involved in a situation, their co-workers will cover.

Wilson tells me that people who’ve gone through their classroom training are sometimes in shock when they work the floor for the first time. I ask him how long it usually takes for a person to figure out they’re not cut out for this kind of work. “The first day they’re in here,” he says.

They may not face the dangers their first responder partners do, but dispatch is still a fast-paced high-stress job, and there are those who thrive in that kind of environment.  Dispatchers are the first cog in the wheel for emergency response in our community. They are truly unsung heroes.

 

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