By Matt Snyder
The Sharon Herald
MERCER COUNTY, Pa. — Step into the Mercer County 911 Center and it looks like the bridge of a spacecraft.
Operators with headsets sit in the dim room at desks with four flat-screen monitors blinking various heads-up displays of phone lines, maps, and data-entry sheets.
The secure, windowless building in Mercer is the county’s public emergency nerve center. Calls pour in like pain sensations to the brain, and dispatchers send police, firefighters or ambulance crews to address the problem.
Along the way, they store information like the times of traffic stops for police, gather information on medical calls or other emergencies to fill in the responders as they approach the scene, and sometimes talk callers through procedures like CPR.
Callers in stressful situations are sometimes prone to hollering. Many don’t understand that 911 operators work in teams, said 16-year veteran Casey Jones.
While the caller and one 911 operator are going over the emergency, figuring out how badly someone is hurt or what’s going on, another has already summoned ambulances or police. But callers assume the operator should be getting off the line to call in help.
“The general public really starts to get upset when they think they need police or an ambulance right now,” Jones said. But operators need to talk things through, so they can give responders a complete picture. That way they arrive with all the equipment, preparation, and personnel needed for the job.
Some people think of operators like Ivan the Terrible, said operator Sherry Penzerro, but they have to ask the questions and get the lay of the land. It’s part of the job.
The stress of the callers turns into stress for them, said operator Carol Andrusky. “You’re trying to help and you get hollered at over the phone. It makes the stress level (higher),” she said. Operators have accordingly high turnover rates.
But stress or not, Ms. Andrusky said the job has its perks. One of her callers had an 88-year-old man nearby choking on pills, and she was able to talk them through the Heimlich maneuver, possibly saving his life.
“You know it is a job where you have to learn to take the good and the bad,” she said.
Not everyone can do it, either, Ms. Andrusky said. Operators have to keep track of many things at once and remember what they’re doing every step of the way.
The center averages 400 calls per day, said Supervisor Russ Saylor. During storms, major fires and other emergencies, Supervisor Valerie Hartman said it can be even crazier.
Kelly Johnston, who was training with Ms. Andrusky, said there’s a wealth of information to memorize: call codes, department numbers, and every police department has slightly different procedures to learn.
The job is also interesting, said operator Tom Stambaugh. Every call is unique, and operators step into each one knowing anything could be happening.
There are subtle clues, though. Stambaugh pointed out how there are more than a dozen phone lines and back-up phone lines displayed on their computer screens. If the lines all light up at once like a Christmas tree, it usually means a big accident that a number of people called in at once -- especially if it’s the cellular lines going off.
Cell phones present a challenge for 911. The center in Mercer is just finishing upgrades to pinpoint the location of callers. Depending on the phone service provider and relay tower, Jones said they can pinpoint as close as 60 to 20 meters from the call. Soon, they’ll know what property a person calls from when they use a cell phone.
That’s good news, said Ms. Hartman. Not only can dispatchers find people who are in trouble, they can take care of a longtime nuisance that 911 has to deal with: bored kids on summer break.
Once the schools let out, Ms. Hartman said they’ll get crank calls from kids. “And they are not nice little kids,” she said.
One year, some lonely and probably bored child called a number of times. “Do you have an emergency?” they would ask. “No. What’s your name?” he’d reply. They’d ask for his parents and he’d hang up.
He once called six times in one eight-hour shift, with breaks at dinner and bed time.
Soon, they’ll be able to track cellular phone calls back to the home or street corner they’re dialed from,
But probably the most frustrating thing, even worse than crank calls, Ms. Hartman said is just being so far away from people who are in dire trouble, and trying to direct them without being able to see, touch, or physically help them.
Nowadays, 911 operators have emergency cards that help them walk callers through medical procedures like CPR. But before having the cards, they weren’t allowed to offer any help. That was difficult for Ms. Penzerro, she said. “If people were dying and you knew CPR, you couldn’t do it.”
But after the cards were issued, they can provide crucial and life-saving information, she said. That makes the job much more worthwhile for her.
The hardest part of the job of all for Ms. Penzerro? Getting calls from little kids when their parents are fighting, or from elderly people who wake up and find out their spouses died in the night. It’s not easy to get over, she said, but there are always other calls waiting on the line.
What can the public do to help the operators smoothly dispatch help? Besides keeping in mind there’s more than one operator, and help is usually on its way while the operator and caller are talking, they can remember to call the non-emergency number for lesser problems that don’t require a police cruiser, fire truck or ambulance.
It keeps the emergency line free for real emergencies, Ms. Hartman said.
Copyright 2009, The Herald, Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services