Lifesavers Navigate ​“The Real World”

A man on West Rock was threatening to kill himself. Jeff Patton had to do some quick calculations to try to help save his life.

Patton, a dispatcher at New Haven’s 911 call center, had the GPS coordinates of where the man was standing. He needed to get those coordinates to Trooper 1, the state police helicopter.

But this was back more than a decade ago, before the local police GPS system was coordinated with the state’s system. The software was different. Patton took out his calculator, converted ​“minutes and seconds” to ​“decimals,” and rushed the information to the pilot in the helicopter so he could save the suicidal man.

The pilot got there while the man was still alive. But … ​“He was waiting for someone to get a spotlight on him, to have an audience. Then he shot himself in the head.”

Patton was devastated. But he kept working the phones.

“You don’t win every one,” he concluded.

Calls Up

Patton and other veterans of New Haven’s Public Service Answering Point (PSAP) — aka the 911 call center — were recalling the day they would never forget on the job, as part of a discussion timed to National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week.

They told the stories on WNHH FM’s ​“Dateline New Haven” program to call attention to the life-or-death work the center’s 57 staffers perform every day. Work that far more often ends in preserving life — but, as Patton’s recollection demonstrated, comes with no guarantees, but with great consequences.

The center’s work has been increasing every year. The staff handled 124,151 911 calls in 2018, up 7,000 from the year before. And late in the year it instituted 911 texting, which promises to increase the load more, while offering more options to save lives.

Adding to the stress of the 911 dispatch job is the fact that staffers often don’t learn the outcome of their efforts to save lives. They seek to elicit crucial information from callers so that cops or firefighters or an ambulance crew can rush to the right scene ready to complete the job.

Snowmaggedon

Rosemary Fuentes did learn at least part of the outcome from the call she’ll never forget

It occurred her second week on the job, while she was still in training. A man called in a panic because his partner was in labor. Fuentes calmed him down, calmed her down. She helped guide them through the delivery— beginning with making sure the woman wasn’t sitting on the toilet. It turns out women sometimes head there during labor, and that can endanger the baby if the baby’s head hits the porcelain.

Then— ​“Once we disconnected with her, we never knew what she had, what the baby’s name was,” Fuentes recalled. But fortunately firefighters who arrived on the scene sent back word that the baby was a girl, and she and mom were doing fine.

George Peet (who’s now the acting PSAP director), has 22 years on the job. He thought back to 2013’s Snowmaggedon, the century-plus blizzard that buried New Haven in 34 inches of snow. Cops and firefighters were stranded; they couldn’t respond to calls. In fact, the 911 crew was helping them, as well, to stay safe.

The crew on duty couldn’t leave, either. ​“The snow was as high as the parking meters” outside, Peet recalled. So he and colleagues spent more than 24 hours fielding calls and improvising advice.

“Try to stay as warm as you can,” he recalled telling people who called from their snowbound cars.

He advised keeping the cars running — but also cracking the window. If possible, get outside and clear snow from the exhaust pipe, he told people. And if you have water or snacks in the car, consume them.

The storm eventually passed, and those callers made it through.

The Real World

Nkoy Moore spoke of heavy rains that predictably flood streets near the police station, in the Cove, and some other low-lying parts of town.

In one such story, a lady called to report she had tried driving through a deeply flooded stretch of a street — and now her car was conked out. She couldn’t get through.

Moore put out the call. But at first the firefighters couldn’t get close enough. They, too, had to worry about driving their truck into the flood, to avoid ruining ​“a $1 million piece of apparatus.”

The woman was scared. Moore talked her down. He encouraged her to step outside into the water. After a few tries, he talked her through it, and she made it to the firefighters.

The PSAP staffers spoke of how, especially when calls don’t turn out well like that, they rely on different techniques to decompress. They talk among themselves to work through an upsetting episode. Fuentes tries to leave work behind her when she gets home, unless she has experienced a particularly bad moment; then she’ll tell her husband about it.

After the West Rock man shot himself, Jeff Patton said, he completed his shift. He eventually took advantage of the Employee Assistance Program (EAP), which supervisors make a point of encouraging staffers to do.

And he went home to unwind one of the ways he knows best — by playing the video game Everquest. (That was before World of Warcraft, his current favorite, hit.)

Why video gaming? ​“You leave the real world behind, Patton said. Until the next shift.

Click on the video to watch the full episode of WNHH FM’s ​“Dateline New Haven” program focused on the work of 911 call center staffers, including advice on when and when not to call in, and why staffers need to ask you lots of questions fast to help.