About the Job

Dispatching is unique because in few other professions do you have so much influence on human life. It's also not a job most kids growing up think about. I've never heard a kid who didn't have a dispatcher in the family, say they wanted to be a 911 dispatcher when they grew up.

Yet a dispatcher has tremendous influence over the outcome of an emergency incident. For instance, a sharp-thinking dispatcher who takes the time to ask why the patient is bleeding profusely may discover that he has a knife, has slashed his wrists, and is threatening to take as many cops as he can with him when he dies. An unobservant or untrained dispatcher might never ask the question.

Dispatchers are the first people on scene of an emergency, and don't let anyone tell you differently. Just ask the dispatcher who EMDs (Emergency Medical Dispatch--trained dispatchers give medical instructions over the phone) a baby's birth successfully, or the unfortunate dispatcher who is the last person to speak to the poor soul who calls to say "I'm committing suicide at ______" and then pulls the trigger while on the phone, all because he doesn't want his body to rot where it falls.

These dispatchers are there, and they are just as much affected as the paramedics and firefighters who arrive in person to care for their patients.

Our dispatchers have worked a motor vehicle rollover where the car caught fire. The two occupants were trapped in the vehicle by the damage done in the rollover. Every time the frantic officer, who had used up his fire extinguisher in vain, keyed up the radio, the dispatchers could hear the men screaming as they burned. These screams, coupled with the officer's panicky anguish, will echo in the dispatchers' mind for a long time, possibly forever. They may not have seen the car, but they were there. In some ways, what we imagine is worse than the actual scene.

Yet we must go on, answering more mundane calls for service. Someone's in someone else's parking spot. Someone's roommate stole an iPod. The rest of the world doesn't stop for the two lost souls in the car. And so we answer the phone again. And again. And again. 24 hours a day. 7 days a week. 365 days a year.

Welcome to dispatch.