EMPORIA (KSNT) – They’re essential workers who answer the call for help every day. But you might not ever see them.
This week, across the country and here in Kansas, 911 dispatchers and call takers are getting the recognition they deserve. Since 1981, the second week of April has been designated as “National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week.”
Here in Kansas, a network of 911 and telecommunications specialists offers support across all 105 counties.
We visited the dispatch center in Emporia this month. The director, Roxanne Vangundy, said the right person for this job can calm highly stressed people, give life-saving instructions and make sense of a chaotic situation. But the job can take its toll.
“Telecommunicators are facing higher and higher mental health struggles because we don’t get to walk away from a call, we’re on to the next one,” Vangundy said. “And so it’s a highly stressful work, and it’s growing in complexity. And so, we’re asking a lot of these people to take on a lot of work that we never have asked them to do before.”
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Vangundy reminds us that behind every firefighter, paramedic and law enforcement officer, a telecommunicator is behind the scenes working to support them all.
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