New Respect for Telecommunicators After a Visit to County Dispatch Center

Last week, I got to spend a few hours in the Fayette County Sheriff’s Office dispatch center. This is where your emergency and non-emergency calls are taken and then dispatched out to first responders. All I can say is ‘wow!’ My reason for taking the time to learn more about Fayette County’s dispatchers was two pronged. First, to share the firefighter’s side of a call and second, to gain insight on the dispatcher’s side and hopefully creating a stronger collaboration between the two sides of the radio. Many people do no not understand that when first responders get in a bind, our lifeline are these dedicated, often times underappreciated telecommunicators.

When I first met Supervisor Kim Haba that day, she said, “well this isn’t a typical day, it’s calm” You see first responders don’t use the term “quiet”, because this word usually triggers chaos. For about an hour and a half I had the luxury to ask questions of Sam and Renee the two dispatchers (also called telecommunicators) on duty.They talked to me about the new Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) System and all of the enhanced features that it has. I also asked what other duties they had; I was amazed. They check on warrant statuses, run license plates and identifications for law enforcement, field and log controlled burn locations, coordinate with the jailers, answer the phone for and forward calls to the deputies, answer general questions etc. These do not stop when a 911 emergency call comes in. All calls and radio traffic must be answered.

With no emergency calls, my time in dispatch was starting to remind me of all the times I go offshore fishing and the guide says, “you should have been here yesterday, we had so many fish we limited out in 2 hours”. Then the special tone for a 911 call rang. And then another and another. Luckily, the calls were minor in comparison, but it took a great amount of concentration and coordination between everyone in the room. Knowing my place, I stayed quiet and out of the way. After the calls were handled, we discussed the brief spike in the calm. They reiterated that that was minor and that if a major call comes in, they get multiple calls on the same incident and each one has to be answered.

My time with FCSO dispatch was short but proved to be very insightful.

I left with a feeling of awe and a new level of respect for this position: one that I myself do not have what it takes to do.