TERRE HAUTE — “9-1-1. What is your emergency?”
Whether car wreck, intruder, medical problem or some other emergency, 911 dispatchers are trained to stay calm and get the information they need and quickly send help.
Anyone using a phone today in Indiana can dial 911 in an emergency. But that wasn’t always the case.
It was 50 years ago this month that 911 services came to Indiana through the efforts of the late U.S. Rep. J. Edward Roush.
The first successful 911 call in Indiana — made in Huntington — was the first in a city served by the AT&T-owned Bell System. (The first actual 911 call in the nation had been made a few months earlier in Alabama.) It would be 24 years, however, before 911 was implemented in Vigo County.
Today, 25 professionals staff the Vigo County Central Dispatch around the clock, answering thousands of calls per month.
LOOKING BACK
During his early days in law enforcement, current Vigo County Sheriff Greg Ewing said the sheriff’s department had one dispatcher, with one electric typewriter and one computer that could receive information about a driver’s license, criminal history or license plate.
“Back in those days, the dispatcher answered the phone, took the information, dispatched a car, maintained a handwritten index card file of warrants, typed the call log — on the typewriter — and monitored the eight jail video monitors and opened electronic doors for the jail,” Ewing said.
If the dispatcher needed to take a restroom break and no jailers were available to answer the phone, the calls went unanswered and the caller had to either call back later or call Indiana State Police.
And, there was no such thing as a dispatcher giving medical instructors to a caller.
“The advent of computers along with 911 has drastically changed operations and the speed at which information is retrieved, relayed and shared across public safety agencies,” Ewing said. “It wasn’t that long ago, or so it seems, that if we (patrol) had to call dispatch by phone, we had to find a pay phone.”
Ed Reuter, executive director of the Statewide 911 board, can relate.
Reuter started as a dispatcher in Evansville for the Indiana State Police, then worked as a trooper for the Seymour district as part of his 33-year career with the state police. He followed that with 10 years as director of Bartholomew County’s emergency operations center.
“Technology has grown so much over the years,” Reuter said. “My dispatching career really helped me become a better police officer, knowing what’s really going on inside dispatch centers.”
Indiana’s 92 counties have about 2,200 dispatchers who answer about 5 million 911 calls per year. They also answer about 5 million additional administrative calls by people who don’t call the emergency line.
ENTER WIRELESS
Reuter said he has seen dispatching change as people transition away from home phones to wireless phones.
About 80 to 83 percent of 911 calls now received are from wireless phones. And, text-to-911 has really taken off in Indiana because of the digital development of the statewide 911 system, Reuter said.
Texting comes in handy when a person cannot talk to a dispatcher -- such as in a domestic violence when making an obvious phone call could be dangerous for the victim.
Dispatchers can also send text messages and alerts to individuals or groups.
Indiana leads the nation in the number of text sessions per year, he said, averaging about 170,000 text sessions per year. Dispatch systems in all 92 counties have had the ability to receive and send text messages since June 2016.
“A lot of other states are looking at Indiana,” Reuter said. “It’s become an extremely valuable tool for the dispatchers.”
Not only has technology changed, but so has the demands and expectations of the job.
“Less than 5 out of every 100 men or women are qualified to do this job because of the high level of tasks and the high stress levels and the training it takes to manipulate and do all the functions that need to happen,” Reuter said.
HIGH EXPECTATIONS, HIGH STRESS
Each person calling 911 in an emergency expects nothing but the best from a dispatcher.
“Usually, when a person calls 911, they aren’t calling because they are having the best day of their life,” Reuter said. “It’s usually the worst day of their life, and maybe the bravest day of their life.”
The dispatcher must be straightforward to get information, stay calm, and send help -- in less than a minute.
Under early dispatch systems, it could take 5 to 6 minutes to get emergency personnel en route to a scene.
“A high degree of emotion comes in on that phone call,” Reuter said. “The number of suicide-related calls are stressful. And sometimes, the dispatcher is the last person who talks to the person.”
Rob McMullen understands the stress of the job. He was a dispatcher in Parke County before becoming dispatch director for Vigo County.
He oversees the 25 dispatchers working in the 911 center housed the basement of the Vigo County Sheriff’s Department.
During one month in 2017, dispatchers answered more than 5,500 calls to 911, and sent or received 300 911 texts. For all of 2017, dispatchers sent 5,002 texts from 911 and received 360 texts to 911.
The dispatch center is usually busy around the clock. And when a major incident -- such as a fatal crash or a hostage standoff -- takes a lot of dispatching energy, other calls for police, fire and ambulance still come in. New dispatchers received about six to eight months of both classroom and on-the-job training, and veteran dispatchers must maintain an minimum of 24 hours of continuing education annually.
NEW TECH, NEW CHALLENGES
Since Vigo County implemented 911 in 1992, technology has improved tremendously.
About 85 percent of the 911 calls come from cell phones. That can be problematic if callers do not know their exact location, because a dispatcher will receive only the location of the cell tower where the call is originating.
Landline phones, however, will provide 911 dispatchers with a caller’s name, address and phone number so the dispatcher will know where the person is.
McMullen currently serves as the president of the National Emergency Number association, an organization of 911 professionals. Their mission is to improve 911 through research, standards development, training, education, outreach and advocacy.
One advancement coming to 911 will be location accuracy. That technology will identify where a caller is, within a few feet. For instance, when a person now calls from a multistory building, the dispatcher only sees the ground floor information for the location. The next generation technology will identify the floor where the caller is located.
Citizens will also be able to send videos and photos to dispatch centers, so it can be relayed back out to first responders.
“When that happens,” McMullen said, “the training of dispatchers will change dramatically. Not only will dispatchers have to learn how to answer calls, dispatch police, fire and EMS, they will also have to be trained on how to deal with seeing injured persons. That is something that dispatch has never had to deal with.”
Reuter said the Statewide 911 Board helps counties pay for some of the 911 services they implement, such as texting and translation services.
Dispatchers statewide have access to Language Line, which covers 180 languages via translator around the clock.
Indiana is a diverse state, Reuter pointed out, and the number of non-English speakers is growing. An experience from his prior job has carried over to the state level.
“Something that bothered me early on was how to work with a woman’s shelter in Bartholomew County for women who didn’t speak English,” Reuter said. “Those women thought that if we couldn’t talk to them, we didn’t care.”
It does take longer when a dispatcher must call the Language Line for a translator, he said, but the information is more accurate and the callers feel safer and respond better.
As the 911 system evolves in Indiana, Reuter said, the funding from the state tries to keep up.
Many counties fund their dispatch centers at least partially with fees charged monthly to each cell phone.
In 2016, the total cost was $184 million to operate 911 centers, Reuter said. The statewide 911 board was able to assist counties with about $86 million in funding.
Considering that cell phone users pay $1 per month for a service that provides 24-hour 911 access, the fee is a good bargain, he said.