Regional dispatch center provides Canton with professional-level support

Staff at the Holbrook Regional Emergency Communications Center moved into their new facility in January.

This story originally appeared in the May 13 edition of the Citizen.

A few years ago, Canton Fire Chief Charles Doody’s niece dialed 911 because of an emergency with her then two-week-old daughter.

“She was choking overnight,” Doody said of the baby girl. “The dispatcher was able to provide CPR instruction over the phone to my niece’s husband, who kept her alive until we were able to arrive.” It turned out that the baby had been throwing up and had a blocked airway, which the EMTs cleared after arriving at the home.

The dispatcher who answered the call that night was not a Canton firefighter answering from Canton. Instead, they were working at the Holbrook Regional Emergency Communications Center (HRECC) on Franklin Street in Holbrook, arranging for a Canton ambulance to go to the family’s home while at the same time giving instructions over the phone to the baby’s father.

Years ago, when a Canton resident called the Canton Fire Department to report a fire or request emergency medical assistance, the call was answered by a Canton firefighter who took down the caller’s name, address, phone number, and what they needed. The firefighter then arranged for assistance to be sent to the designated address.

One of the people answering those calls from residents was Doody, who joined the CFD 27 years ago and has been the chief of the department since 2009. “I was hired as a firefighter and EMT basic,” he said. He spent 13 weeks learning about basic ambulance service, fire suppression, and other firefighting techniques. Then he started his career, following a schedule that the department had at that time: a three-week rotation with one week spent on a truck, one week on an ambulance, and one week working as a dispatcher. He admitted that dispatch work was not his favorite.

“I hated it,” Doody said. “You were trained as a professional firefighter. Firefighters are action-oriented personalities. We did our own dispatching. We had to answer phones and talk on radios. That’s the way it was back then.”

Canton is a primary Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP), one of 265 across the state. Emergency 911 calls made from landlines in Canton go directly to the Canton Police Department. Many 911 calls from cell phone users in town are also answered by a CPD dispatcher, depending on the cell tower that a call pings. If a call pings a tower that is closer to another town, however, a police dispatcher from that town will answer. If the Canton Police dispatcher determines that the caller needs help from the Canton Fire Department, the call is sent to the regional center in Holbrook.

Stephen Hooke, the director of HRECC, started as a dispatcher in Holbrook in 1993 and has worked hard over the years to make the regional center a reality. The Atlantic Charter of the Association of Public Safety Communications Professionals (APCO) recently named Hooke as its National Director of the Year for 2021. He received the Regional Director of the Year Award in 2019.

Lauren Mielke, HRECC’s deputy director of communications, said that a move from communities handling their own dispatching, as Canton did in the past, to being part of a regional emergency communications center began to ramp up in 2012 with a move to staff the centers with trained dispatchers who could provide pre-arrival instructions to callers.

Mielke explained that dispatchers in Holbrook are trained to provide support in a variety of emergency situations, participate in continuing education work, and are CPR certified. They answer the calls by saying ‘911. This line is being recorded. Where is your emergency?’

Mielke said that the organizational structure of the Holbrook department consists of a director, deputy director, 16 full-time telecommunicators (including four supervisors), 13 part-time telecommunicators, one full-time information technologist and an administrative assistant. There are presently 12 console positions. Six of them are 911 positions; one is a supervisor position. An operations manager and training coordinator will be added in the next year as well as four full-time telecommunicators.

“The emergency dispatcher has a script in front of them so that each caller receives the same level of care,” Mielke explained. The scripts deal with callers needing help giving CPR, controlling bleeding, assisting someone who is in labor, and other situations. Dispatchers at the Holbrook center receive initial assessment from a town they serve and dispatch fire department and medical emergency support while staying on the line with the caller. The Holbrook center provides emergency support for Canton, Sharon, Holbrook, Abington, Whitman, and Rockland.

Mielke worked as a dispatcher for 12 years in Easthampton prior to becoming the director of the regional center in Westfield. She became the deputy director in Holbrook three years ago. In her own experience, one call that Mielke answered stands out in her memory from her time as a dispatcher. It was a 10-year-old girl who had dialed 911 because her mother was unresponsive. Mielke provided the child with pre-arrival support.

“The child ultimately saved her mother,” Mielke said. “The questions asked and the answers given helped.” Having a trained dispatcher answering a line, even though the dispatcher is responding from another town, makes a difference.

“I think it’s extremely effective,” Mielke said. “By joining forces and combining some resources, we’re more effective in responding to the public. The response time doesn’t change. It’s really a matter of seconds. There’s no delay in service.”

In a letter nominating Hooke for the national award, Mielke wrote of the director, “Over the years and with the help of his mentors, he worked diligently to promote and build the department from a one-person dispatching operation to a large regional center. His dedication, passion, drive and hard work are what can be credited for the success of the operation. He bought into the notion that communications regionalization was the future of communications and spent countless hours successfully building the operation. I don’t know of anyone with the same level of knowledge, passion, drive, determination and overall love of the job. I don’t know of anyone who eats, sleeps and breathes this profession the way he does.”

Doody said that the annual cost to Canton for being part of HRECC is about $250,000, some of which comes back to the town in the form of the maintenance and upgrading of the communications infrastructure of the CFD. He said that when people say that the cost is high, he explains that the department schedules four firefighters for each of four shifts. Before joining the regional center, one of those firefighters worked at the dispatch desk in Canton, meaning that one professionally trained firefighter could not join the others to respond to an emergency. The staffing cost for each firefighter is about $100,000, which Doody said meant that $400,000 was being used to cover what $250,000 does now. He said it also means that the firefighter who was working as a dispatcher each shift can be taken off the desk. “We can put him or her on the truck to use their training as a firefighter, EMT or paramedic.”

The bottom line for Doody is reflected in the care his niece’s daughter, who is now 2 years old, received. “To me,” he said, “that is worth every penny that the town of Canton pays for a regional dispatch center with professional dispatchers.”

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Posted by Mary Ann Price on May 21 2021. Filed under Features. Both comments and pings are currently closed.