ANSWERING THE CALL

The staff of St. Charles County Emergency Communications handles life-or-death situations on a daily basis as they answer 911 calls from around the county

By Brett Auten

IN A TIME OF CRISIS OR DANGER, when you are pleading for help, you want the voice on the other line to be both sympathetic and competent.

The staff of St. Charles County Emergency Communications provides dispatching services for all fire and EMS agencies within St. Charles County, as well as the St. Charles County Police Department, Sheriff’s Department, and Department of Corrections. In 2022, dispatchers across St. Charles County answered 127,265 calls to 911, with an average answer time of 3.5 seconds. More than half of all those calls were either answered by or transferred to County Emergency Communications dispatchers.

National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week is held annually during the second week of April to honor public safety telecommunicators for their commitment, service and sacrifice.

The Community News touched base with several of these unsung heroes. To a person, they talked about the ability to listen intently and multi-tasking as two of the more important traits. Several come from first responder families, whether it be police, fire or ambulance and they also trumpeted the fulfillment they receive as working together as a team, often referring to their coworkers as family.

Andrea Burke has worked for St. Charles County Emergency Communications for 15 years.

“Emotionally, it is imperative that you are able to compartmentalize and work through difficult situations involving life, death, and property,” Burke said. “In this job, you could quite possibly be giving a wife instructions on how to perform CPR on her husband until paramedics arrive and then instantly be on the next call instructing a husband on how to help his wife deliver their baby.”

While everyone likes to speak of the triumphant days, it is not always like that.

“Unfortunately, the bad calls seem to be the ones you remember the most,” Burke said. “But I do remember helping a father deliver his baby and take care of the mom until paramedics arrived. The call lasted approximately 10 minutes and, in that time, I helped him prepare mom and deliver a healthy baby boy. I believe that baby would be about 10 years old today.”

Brian Garms wanted to be a dispatcher back in the early 2010s when it seemed several of his friends were looking for a career in public safety. Garms was able to think critically under stress in one of the most famous calls in recent memory, the ice rescue at Lake St. Louis in 2015 that was later turned into the movie, “Breakthrough.”