Sheriff weighs in on dispatch concerns

SKYE POURNAZARI/DAILY FORUM
The Nodaway County Ambulance District office. The board approved a base rate and mileage rate increase to start Jan. 1, 2018.

What started as a discussion about district pagers at the Nodaway County Ambulance Board meeting last Wednesday, quickly turned to dispatching concerns.

Board Member Herb Snodderly said he called into Clearmont, they paged out Burlington Fire.

“I didn’t have a radio so I just called them on the phone and said, ‘Don’t call the Fire Department it’s rescue.’ The second page came out and the ambulance was two-thirds of the way there by the time they got that done and paged out West Nodaway Fire again. They had to be told twice.

“I said I can hear the ambulance and you guys haven’t got it paged out yet,” Snodderly said. “… Coming up there made no difference we really didn’t need the unit, but for the ambulance to get almost there and they still hadn’t paged rescue …”

Board Secretary John Redden said, “It’s an issue.”

Redden said he heard three calls one weekend on the east side of the county and the first call was South Ravenwood, the second call came in and it was Conception and the third was Gentry County line. “It was all due to information sent to dispatch,” he said.

“I’d just like to know what the hell we’re going to sometimes,” Board Member Rick Allen expressed. “I don’t know if it’s just a lack of training?”

Redden said, “That’s a lot of it right there. They’re not getting all that information.”

LaRee Lager, business manager for the district said, “They do a lot. Turnover is huge. With Maryville Public Safety building a new building there’s the perfect way to put in a new dispatch center.”

Operations Manager Bill Florea told the board part of the issue is more people shifting to using cellphones. He said if someone calls 911 from a cellphone and not a land line it will show the location of the tower the cellphone is using to make the call, not necessarily the location of the caller. Also, the position is one of high turnover because of stress.

“I wish everyone could go up there just once and watch a few of them, because they have so much interference going on at the same time,” he said.

Florea also said the dispatchers have many things going on at the same time and that it’s stressful for them to keep all the traffic straight and then get information from the caller with the emergency.

“That’s why there needs to be one center for 911,” said Allen.

Last Thursday, Nodaway County Sheriff Randy Strong said he couldn’t agree more.

“I think everybody recognizes the need for it,” he said. “I am hoping that during my first term as sheriff we can consolidate 911, because it’s a convoluted mess here.”

He said it’s a matter of getting the city and county governments together with all the right people in the room to discuss how to make it happen.

Adding to the problem, the consoles in the 911 center in the county and at Public Safety are at the end of their life expectancy and they’re not under warranty.

“Public Safety has got the bond issue passed and they’re building a new building, so the timing’s right,” Strong said. “While in the planning stages of that, let’s get this consolidated at the same time and we should be moving forward on that.”

Strong said he discussed the consolidated 911 center idea with Maryville Public Safety Director Keith Wood just last week.

“We’re going to try to get an audience with the government entities that are involved,” Strong said. “To me the logical thing is to have the new 911 center in the new public safety building and they need to plan for that and then they can run 911 and I can run the jail. And I think that would probably be the best of both worlds.”

The city struggles to get new dispatchers for its 911 center as does the county he said. “Everyone I’ve talked to has had trouble staffing 911 centers because it’s so stressful,” Strong said.

He said dispatchers are constantly interrupted. They are trying to answer multiple calls and tend to the radio too, plus dispatching out the ambulance or fire or whatever else they need to go out.

“It’s a stressful situation with a lot of information coming in that they have to sort out,” Strong said. “While this is going on they have to be sitting there logging this information in. It’s tedious it’s fast-paced. It’s stressful for them.”

Strong said it can be difficult to get information from someone who calls in for a true emergency. They can be calling for a loved one who’s stopped breathing or passed out. The callers can be loud and yelling into the phone or screaming.And when someone gets short with them on the radio because they can’t get an answer right away then that adds to their stress level.

Strong said he’s had discussions with his deputies about a dispatcher’s need for time to resolve all the issues.

“It’s just a delicate balance,” Strong said.

There are three dispatch centers in Maryville and each tends to different areas.

Northwest Missouri State University has its own dispatch center that handles university calls only.

The City of Maryville has its own dispatch center that handles only Maryville Police and Maryville Fire.

Nodaway County has its own dispatch center that handles the Sheriff’s Office, Nodaway County Ambulance District and all the rural fire departments.