For years, I mistakingly believed that “working a double” meant twelve hours. This naïve opinion stemmed from my early retail experience in Pigeon Forge, where the stores were open 9-9. So if I worked open to close, that was “a double”. When I went to work for 911 dispatch, I learned that was not the case. While 12 hours of demanding tourists is enough to kill anybody, it barely holds a flame to spending 16 hours in a 20×20 room with three people tethered to three computers each and a radio system the size of a refrigerator. You don’t get a 30 minute lunch break reprieve in another room, you eat right there at your console with your headset attached. You can go to the bathroom, but you better make it snappy. And that’s the 8 hour days. You don’t work sixteens every day, just the days when weather catches you & your coworkers unaware. Because if you knew a big snowstorm was coming and you didn’t think you could get back, then the county would put you up for the night in some luxury accommodations–the Landmark Inn. It wasn’t the Four Seasons, but it was close to work. And if you got stuck at home, well, the Rescue Squad would be sent to retrieve you. IF they got time, that is. The county has a limited few that are dispatchers, and they need every one.
That being said, when you think of emergency personnel, I’m sure you think of firefighters, paramedics, & police officers. You don’t think of that steady voice who came down the line when you punched out those three digits with trembling fingers. You don’t remember them giving you “pre-arrivals”, the instructions on staunching the bleeding on your husband’s arm, or coaching you through CPR compressions on your mother, or getting your child on their side after a seizure, down to turning on your porch light for the ambulance to spot you a fraction of a second quicker. You don’t remember that person who efficiently withdrew information from your nearly indecipherable hysterics as you watched your house burn down, or the victim of a car crash struggle as they fought for every breath. You were just relieved when the sirens grew closer & you could hang up.
Brush fires, house fires, flooding, you name it, it doesn’t take much for things to get out of control quickfastandinahurry. Holidays are generally the busiest, with a little too much ‘togetherness’ with family, a bit too much overindulgence, and always the added stress of traveling. You don’t just have one thing at a time, either. Likely, if you’ve got two “regular EMS calls”, you’ve got a car wreck (that you receive no less than twenty calls on), somebody fightin’ with their baby daddy, & a ” it’s not really an emergency but…” call. And that’s on a Wednesday first shift.
Don’t overlook your dispatchers on icy days. Likely, they haven’t been home in a day or two, haven’t eaten much besides what they could scavenge from the fridge in their airtight, bulletproof room (unless they could sweet talk friends or family to deliver them food), and would just like to hear “thank you” from the mouth of whoever they’ve been talking down for the last thirty minutes until first responders get there. Plenty of things wreck havoc in Sevier County, and they can’t go home until serenity is restored. Drink your coffee & smoke your cigarettes, dispatch, I’m sure you earned them this week. I think of y’all often.
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