First Responders Club tours 911 center
BROOKVILLE — Students in the Punxsutawney Area High School’s Future First Responders Club recently traveled to Brookville to tour the Jefferson County 911 dispatch center.
Dispatchers are oftentimes the first of the first Responders in an emergency.
Punxsutawney borough police officer Ryan Miller, the PAHS school resource officer, has been busy attempting to get students at the high school interested in careers in emergency services through his work with the club.
Miller said the job of a dispatcher is highly stressful. They are required not only to stay calm under pressure but to project calmness to callers.
“Dispatchers are skilled communicators that need to be able to perform a variety of functions simultaneously or within very short time periods,” Miller said. “They need to communicate on the phone, utilize various programs on the computer and relay vital information and coordinate with responders on the radio.”
Miller said that in emergency response, the dispatcher is the vital component that brings resources together.
“Students learned about the various roles each dispatcher takes on at the 911 center, with dedicated areas to fire, EMS and police,” he said, adding that dispatchers are the unseen heroes during an emergency.
He said although rarely seen, dispatchers are always heard and play just as important a part as the firefighters extinguishing the flames, the police officers at a traffic collision or the EMTs administering life-saving measures to a patient.
Miller said that students were able to learn about the multitude of capabilities of the 911 center and its technological progression into a state-of-the-art facility.
He said students also learned that people are able to contact 911 via text message if there are circumstances that prevent them from calling.
“Examples were given that maybe a caller is non- verbal, or maybe a circumstance is on going that the caller does not want to be vocal due to an immediate threat,” Miller said. “The 911 center has the capability to be able to communicate with those individuals and organize a proper emergency response.”
“I am personally very thankful for the day- today professionalism of our county’s dispatchers. Jefferson County is blessed with some of the best, and on behalf of the FFRC, I would like to thank Tracy Zents (county emergency services director), Chris Clark (911 director) and their staff for the opportunity to observe and learn about their roles and the profession,” Miller said.