- April 26, 2024
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Emergency center ready for disasters
Wayne Grant
News Editor
In the past year, two people committed suicide while talking to 911 dispatchers, called telecommunicators, at the Sheriff’s Communications Center on Tiger Bay Road.
The 43,000-square-foot building, which opened in 2013 at a cost of $21 million, has state-of-the-art technology, including high-speed optical circuits and the latest dispatch consoles, but the most important link is still the person who answers the call. All calls to 911 from Volusia County go to the center and last year they numbered 336,000.
The telecommunicator must calm the caller, verify the address, provide CPR instructions if necessary, provide crucial information to responders and send the appropriate emergency crews.
It’s a challenging, highly-technical job that requires a year of training, and the two suicides are examples of the stressful situations they face, said John Balloni, communications director.
He’s seen workers go to the break room, cry and then go back to work. But he said the job can also be tremendously rewarding.
“How many jobs are there where you save lives on a daily basis?” he said.
Balloni spoke April 14 on a tour of the facility where the media got introduced to the changes in emergency communications in Volusia County over the past few years.
Prior to Balloni starting last August after relocating from New York, the communications area was managed by law enforcement officers. A decision was made last year to hire a professional civilian administrator.
The Sheriff’s Office has handled all emergency calls in Volusia County since 2011. Before that, only a few communities contracted with the Sheriff’s Office. Ormond Beach signed agreements for police and fire dispatch service in 2007.
Balloni said it was an inefficient system because there were a dozen dispatch systems in the county.
In 2011, the County Council voted to fund emergency operations for the entire county with tax dollars, and all the communities joined.
The ‘forgotten worker’
The Communications Center must deal with a high turnover for telecommunicators, which is around the national average of 19%. But some people make the job a lifetime career.
“It takes a special person,” said spokeswoman Claudia Boring.
They have a staff of 161, but not all positions are filled, so there are currently about 130 telecommunicators. The starting pay for someone with no experience is $11.72 an hour, and the top pay is $21 an hour.
Belloni also said in some ways the telecommunicator is the “forgotten worker.” For an example, he said a man found his grandchild in a pool not breathing. He was unsure how to administer CPR, but the telecommunicator patiently led him through the steps and got the child breathing again. When the firemen arrived, the phone hung up. There were no thanks for the operator, just another call from a person in an emergency.
Watching for disasters
The 911 operations take up only half of the building. The other half is occupied by the Emergency Operations Center, where events such as hurricanes are monitored. It’s even staffed during events such as the Daytona 500, in case there is a large public emergency.
The operations center has been activated 62 times since 1993. The longest activation was during the hurricanes of 2004, when it was activated for 44 days at its previous facility.
All the agencies that must coordinate activities have seats in the room, including Transportation Safety Agency, the airport, Department of Transportation, emergency management offices, etc.
Jim Judge, director of the Department of Public Protection, said when a hurricane is threatening the coast, they watch closely to decide when to “pull the trigger” on evacuation orders, with a goal to get people off the barrier island before tropical winds strike.
Shelters should be avoided, unless necessary, because they have the minimum comfort.
“We say run from water and hide from wind,” he said. That is, if a person is threatened by a storm surge or other flooding, they should evacuate. But if the threat is only wind, they can hunker down after taking precautions with shutters and supplies. He said a lot of valuable information can be found on volusia.org/emergency.
