city o f du bl i n by Rebecca Myers Photo courtesy of City of Dublin
Benefiting a Region: A 911 Call Center’s Evolution The dedicated people who turn chaos into help “We don’t just dispatch police cars and fire trucks. We don’t just answer 911 calls. We ensure the safety, service and security of your communities.” That’s what Jay Somerville shares about the devoted 911 dispatchers working at the Northwest Regional Emergency Communications Center, known as NRECC, headquartered at the Dublin Justice Center. As the center’s bureau commander, Somerville points out that the public might not know exactly what dispatchers do. Communications technicians, as they’re known at NRECC, are the “first first-responders” for someone seeking help, he says. Taking 911 calls, being a calm voice, and sending out the appropriate team of first responders to a person’s exact location is the fast-paced, decisive business of dispatching. If you’ve had to call 911 while in Dublin, Hilliard, Upper Arlington or Worthington recently, you’ve been connected with a dispatcher from NRECC who has worked in a matter of minutes to link you with the right resources. While NRECC as a consolidated center has only served this area since 2013, it has continued to add new fire and police department partners in that time, and just completed fully staffing the organization with dispatchers and a new leadership structure this year. NRECC’s Beginnings While 911 seems synonymous with calling for help, Franklin County residents have only been able to dial those three numbers for assistance since 1987, after state legislation created the three-digit 14 • October/November 2021
Communications Supervisor Katie Edwards trains technician Ashley Hayes at NRECC.
emergency calling system that was put in place in the county that year. “The joke is I was 911 before there was a 911,” Somerville says of his three decades dispatching. He explains as emergency response time has been drastically reduced during his career – like cutting the phone number from 10 digits to three – dispatchers have had to act more and more like air traffic controllers to rapidly manage the resources needed on a scene and to provide the most accurate information available. “The dispatcher isn’t just a pass-through; they’re an actual coordinator of emergency response,” Somerville says. “Today, we are getting detailed information from callers, we’re providing them … medical instructions, we’re providing them safety and security instructions. As the first-first responder, callers rely on us.” NRECC’s consolidated structure began with discussions in 2012 when the City
of Dublin was asked by neighboring suburbs to consider serving as the single answering point for other regional agencies, something that would provide faster service for the area’s residents. At the time, the City was only dispatching for Dublin Police and the Washington Township Fire Department. Somerville notes how the concept of housing dispatchers at one 911 center aligns with Dublin’s mission of providing quality dispatching in order to improve the overall police and fire/EMS services throughout the community. One center would mean having one high standard of quality for all the communities, he says. Once Dublin started to build its center by dispatching for the Norwich Township Fire Department in 2013 and adding Hilliard Police several months later in 2014, the growth kept pace with Upper Arlington Police and Fire coming online in the www.dublinlifemagazine.com
