In the still of the night, Central Dispatch has your back

COEUR d’ALENE — On a dark night, the low building surrounded by a fence and sliding gate with a red, laser eye appears to be a top-secret government facility.

In a Coeur d’Alene neighborhood not given to glitz and surrounded by high pines, the Kootenai County Central Dispatch Center isn’t top secret. However, it does require a security clearance for the gate to open and close.

Seldom are people seen outside.

That’s because the dozen or so county employees who work in the building on north Julia Street during around-the-clock shifts stare at computer screens while locked in to emergency radio traffic.

They answer telephone calls too.

“9-1-1, what is the address of your emergency?” dispatcher Riley Noesen says into a mouthpiece.

The low buzzing of her 9-1-1 line, distinguishable from other calls by its deep tone, prompted her to step into 9-1-1 mode.

“The dispatchers have scripts that they follow when they get a 9-1-1 call,” supervisor Cheryl Hallgren said.

The center receives 51,000 emergency 9-1-1 calls annually.

On this particular call, the caller informs the dispatcher that all is OK. She has accidentally dialed 9-1-1.

Noesen is polite, hangs up and then dispatches police to check it out, anyhow.

“Something didn’t seem right,” Noesen said.

Often people who are in distress dial 9-1-1, but a person, maybe a relative, and maybe the one who is causing them grief, tells them to hang up.

It takes someone of Noesen’s experience — she’s been a dispatcher for four years — to listen for the little things that lend validity to a call, even if the caller says everything is OK.

“This is the only job I’ve ever had,” said Noesen, who was hired after finishing school.

TRAINING and TURNOVER

Although experience is a bonus for dispatch crews, turnover takes its toll.

The long hours — dispatchers often work three or four long days and irregular hours — and job stress are taxing.

Despite earning days off, the dispatchers regularly spend overtime days at the center.

In addition, Hallgren and her crew are often in the process of training new recruits as an ongoing effort to keep the center adequately staffed.

Trainees start at the dispatch call center before working their way into the full-fledged dispatch center.

The heart of the center is a circular facility where dispatchers sit at their stations viewing a series of screens, a half dozen or more — with their backs to the center of the room.

The screens may have maps, a list of call locations and they are split into agencies. Although dispatchers are paid by the county, they dispatch for fire and ambulance, the sheriff’s office, Coeur d’Alene Police, Coeur d’Alene Tribe, Hayden Lake, Spirit Lake and Rathdrum.

Inside the circular room, a half dozen dispatchers work at all hours answering calls, keeping track of patrol officers and EMTs, and responding to fire and crash calls — as well as 9-1-1 calls.

A ROUGH NIGHT

Noesen and Hallgren were among dispatchers on call last summer when the center’s call boards lit up.

It was the Fourth of July. Several dispatchers monitored a downtown event channel reserved for things like parades and, in this case, the July 4 fireworks display in downtown Coeur d’Alene.

A shooting was reported in the city’s waterfront park and calls were coming in like fireworks.

“This whole screen was lit up with 9-1-1 calls,” Guy Butterfield said.

Butterfield had just graduated from the call center to the dispatch center and was still being trained.

“I was training that night, and all of a sudden this place exploded,” he said. “I tried helping out however I could.”

In the Fourth of July shooting, 18-year-old Tyler Rambo allegedly fired on another man, and then at police in city park before being wounded by officers in a salvo of gunfire.

The incident had hundreds of people in the park diving for cover and racing away in a panic, leaving their cars and belongings behind.

As the incident was underway, dispatchers systematically answered calls, calmed callers and directed officers in and around the area.

“People were calling all night about it,” said dispatcher Jennifer Nixon, a 17-year veteran of central dispatch. “They were wanting to know what to do, where to go …”

The calls didn’t end after the incident was over and Rambo was taken into custody.

ONLY THE BEGINNING

Hundreds of downtown visitors called the center for hours and even days afterward to help locate things left behind in the fracas.

“There were a lot of people from out of town. They needed to know how to get their personal belongings,” Nixon said.

The dispatchers on duty that night were honored by the sheriff’s office at a year-end ceremony. They received the Idaho Public Safety Communications Team of the Year Award.

The men and women were recognized for their dexterity in working together and with the public, as well as with the many officers and agencies involved in the incident.

“You kind of have to listen to everyone in the room,” Hallgren said. “As soon as someone says, ‘shots fired,’ everyone gets involved.”

In addition to their duties relaying calls to police, EMTs and fire, directing resources and maintaining a certain airwave order, dispatchers also answer regular phone calls — as they did during the Fourth of July shooting at City Park.

“We get about 250,000 calls per year in here,” Hallgren said. “Not just 9-1-1.”

OH, THERE’S MORE

As part of their routine, dispatchers run license plates for officers, look up criminal histories, they pinpoint the locations of cellphone calls for help, and talk people down who want to harm themselves.

Dispatchers also instruct people how to perform rescue operations while medical personnel are on the way, and they keep people on the line, as help closes in.

“You expect the unexpected,” Hallgren said.

As the access to cellular phones becomes almost universal, the call volume at the center has increased proportionately.

“Everyone has a cellphone,” she said.

And although dispatchers are used to quick thinking in times of need, there are slow calls in which incidents develop at a snail’s pace. Those calls can become part of a dispatcher’s psyche.

Noesen had one of those calls several years ago when a fisherman at Fernan Lake reported what he thought was a car under water.

Noesen talked with the man, dispatching deputies, fire and medical crews as time dragged on.

Slowly it became apparent that a mother and her children were in the car.

Misty Phelps, 25, and her sons, 1-year-old Tristan Phelps and 2-year-old Riley Phelps, were dead.

Although dispatchers are often close to tragedies, there are many times when they don’t have time to grieve, or they don’t know the result of the calls they’ve dispatched.

“They don’t get closure,” Hallgren said. “It adds to the stress.”

For Noesen, that Nov. 3, 2016, incident at Fernan Lake is at the top of her list of misfortune.

“It’s the thing that has always stayed with me,” she said.