HAGERSTOWN – The night of April 19 inundated Washington County’s 911 Emergency Communications Center with a record-breaking 1,518 emergency calls over six hours as a powerful storm swept through the region with scant warning, causing widespread damage and prompting thousands of urgent pleas for help.
Telecommunicators are responsible for quickly assessing calls, coordinating multi-agency responses, and relaying critical information to officers in the field. According to the National Emergency Number Association (NENA), an estimated 240 million 911 calls are made annually in the United States, not including calls to non-emergency numbers and administrative phone lines. According to the same NENA statistics, about 80% of 911 calls come from wireless devices, adding to the complexity of pinpointing caller locations, understanding incident dynamics, and adding the possibility of text and video information for the telecommunicator to sort through.
Enhanced 911, now available at a handful of emergency operations centers, could be statewide by 2026.
The surcharge on your monthly phone bill funds the service, which allows callers to stream live video from emergency situations. Callers who use a language other than English can also communicate with a text translator, using what’s known as “E – 911.”
LEWISTON, Idaho — This week marks National Public Safety Telecommunications Week, a time to honor and recognize the dedicated telecommunications professionals who serve their communities in times of need. Among these unsung heroes are two communication specialists from the Lewiston Dispatch.
“We’re behind the scenes. You never see us out in the community or out in public, you only hear voices… sometimes people might not know about us,” shared Halley Challis, training coordinator at BC 911. “To get that appreciation from the community, it means a lot to us; that people know what we do and they know that we’re here, that we’re behind the scenes and that we’re the voice on the other end of that phone.”
