DISPATCHERS’ HIDDEN CRITICAL INCIDENTS
COMMUNICATIONS
THE EFFECTS OF critical incidents on firefighters, line officers, and chiefs are known. Much has been written on how to recognize the warning signs—changes in both attitude and ability to perform firefighting duties (see, for example, “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and the Firefighter,” Fire Engineering, November 1985, and “Posttrauma Response Programs,” Fire Engineering, August 1988). By focusing attention on this human aspect of the fire service, we hope to maintain optimal operating efficiency.
There is, however, another human link in the fire response chain, someone with a lower profile than fireground personnel but who is also exposed to job-specific, critical incident stress: the fire dispatcher.
LOSS OF CONTROL
A critical incident is a sudden and uncontrollable event that causes multiple disruptions in life. It affects your basic personal operating security about the world in which you live and the way that world works. A critical incident is perceived as a life-damaging event and often includes a sense of loss, most significantly a loss of personal stability and control. The ability to impose control on otherwise uncontrollable situations is very much at the heart of the fire service. To that end, the dispatcher is a vital link. Like the firefighter, he must preplan, know his tools, drill, and be disciplined.
Those unfamiliar with communications center operations may think that a dispatcher’s job is sometimes exciting, often dull, and not especially demanding. The first two perceptions are correct; the last is dead wrong. It’s what you don’t hear over the scanner that is demanding.
Dispatchers talk on the phone to panic-stricken and disoriented people. They may be the last hope in life for some of them —and in some cases, even that hope is not sufficient. Although they are required to remain calm and controlled on the air, inside they pay the price in stress.
ONE-TO-ONE CRISIS
The quickly developing disruptive force of the dispatcher’s critical incident is focused through a telephone conversation with one person. It’s intensely personal. I have been in dispatch centers when dispatchers are engaged in everyday conversation—picking football winners, joking, planning the shift’s meal—when a single phone rings. One of the dispatching staff goes over to a console and picks up the call while the others continue talking. Suddenly the dispatcher on the phone straightens up in his chair and begins writing frantically. Across the room, the discussion of hamburgers vs. chicken continues. While the dispatcher on the phone hears the horrific sounds of panic, turmoil, injury, and loss (“There’s been an explosion, and my husband is trapped in the garage!” “I can’t get out—I just threw my son out the window!” “The car fell off the jack!”), nobody else in the room is aware of the situation. It’s just between the caller and the dispatcher.
The dispatcher knows he’s got a serious situation, and his perception of that situation may be “By God, I’d better get the details straight or somebody’s going to die!” Some dispatchers in this type of situation jump up and start waving their hands while they’re still on the phone, trying to get help with getting help. Others run around the dispatch center and follow the alarm’s processing even though they cannot speed up the process. Afterward, some receiving dispatchers (who took the original call) have said that it seemed to take hours to get the alarm into the system, get the apparatus rolling, and get a preliminary report from the field forces, when, in fact, alarm analysis invariably showed that the responses were as quick or quicker than usual.
WHAT THE DISPATCHER PERCEIVES
The physical responses of jumping up, waving arms, and following the alarm through the dispatch center are relief valves for the dispatcher’s need to do something with the horrible information he has just received. In fact, these behaviors can occasionally result in a more productive response to an alarm. If, for example, a nonstructural fire was about to be dispatched, it may get put aside for a few precious seconds because the dispatching staff has been tipped off by the dispatcher on the phone waving his arms that a more serious event is coming in right behind the brushfire.
For the most part, though, the alarm gets processed just as fast as always. Why, then, does it seem as if it takes forever? One of the characteristics of a critical incident is perceptual distortion. Two-thirds of police officers involved in shootings, for instance, report a feeling of “slow motion” when recalling the incident. The same phenomenon afflicts dispatchers involved in critical incidents.
Perception plays a very important part in the entire issue of critical incident stress—what is a critical incident for one dispatcher may not be for another. This is not a sign of weakness on the part of the affected dispatcher but rather a sign of individuality. Each dispatcher brings a different background to the job. A young, single dispatcher. listening to the tape of a fire call taken by an older dispatcher who is the father of four children, may not notice on the first review that crying kids could be heard faintly in the background. The older dispatcher, on the other hand, may not be able to get it out of his mind.
It may also appear that a dispatcher is unaffected by a call when, in fact, he’s been scarred by the event more than even he knows. I know a dispatcher who dismisses all of his nightmarish experiences with a macho “To hell with it, it s just a job.” However, as the years have passed, he has taken much of the job to heart, has done so alone, and has steadily increased his drinking. He’s paying the price.
Another factor that alters a dispatcher’s perception of events and causes him to view incidents with more alarm is past experience with a similar situation. If, for instance, he has seen coworkers interrogated for hours after receiving a bomb threat, the next bomb threat he receives may cause his pulse to quicken. After I had taken what was purported to be a terrorist threat to blow up a few buildings, investigative units I didn’t even know existed asked me the strangest questions. Besides the standard questions about background noises and accents, one investigator asked me if I thought the caller sounded like a big guy. After that experience, my fellow workers and I were concerned for a while about finding an accurate way to measure height by telephone!
A dispatcher’s home address was published after he was involved in processing a fatal fire and, before all the facts about the fire were known, his family received some nasty phone calls. His protective insulation was stripped away, leaving him with a strong sense of vulnerability. When the department did not come to his defense, his co-workers very clearly felt that they were on their own with each and every call they took. This increased the likelihood of their experiencing loss of control and a sense of personal damage on subsequent calls. The department, by abandoning the dispatcher, virtually guaranteed an increase of critical incident stress in the future.
LESSENING THE SEVERITY
A department can help its dispatchers handle critical incidents. It can warn them that such things do happen. This will make it easier for dispatchers to realize when it does happen. It will also validate the feelings that the dispatcher experiences after a critical incident and reassure him that he is having a normal response to an extraordinarily abnormal stimulus.
The affected dispatcher can expect to “numb out” for a week or two after the event. In fact, he may have difficulty remembering some or all of what happened. In his personal sphere, the threat represented by the event is enormous— it eats at the very heart of his personal support system and basic assumptions about life. He may become preoccupied with the event —trying to master it or control it in retrospect. Failure to do this may make him irritable or hyperactive. He may become mildly paranoid about his co-workers’ assessments of his performance during the event, and good-natured kidding may cause him considerable anxiety.
If the critical incident was a part of something unusual—such as a fatal fire—the official investigation can keep some of the dispatcher’s initial uncomfortable feelings fueled. If the event was not recognized by others for the personal disruption it was, the dispatcher can easily slip into isolation and depression unnoticed. He may experience the symptoms of acute post-traumatic stress disorder and have nightmares or difficulty sleeping, loss of interest in social and family activities, increased substance use and abuse, flashbacks and/or intrusive thoughts, fear about future similar job situations, and intensive selfblaming. Without some help, a dispatcher can stay in this dysfunctional frame of mind for quite some time. In a department whose dispatching force has been prepared for this occurrence, it is far more likely that somebody will recognize the cause of these symptoms.
The department can also help ease critical incidents by discussing realistic expectations during dispatcher training. There are going to be some events that nobody can control. Brooklyn dispatchers used to pride themselves on the fact that they could quickly get whatever resource a chief on the fireground asked for. They’d whip out the old “10-4” acknowledgment even if they didn’t have the faintest notion of where to get a front-end loader, shoring timbers, or a helicopter at 3:00 a.m. This “can-do” attitude needs to be tempered somewhat with reality. The ever-present assumption of “I am in total control” only leads to self-blame in negative outcomes. In retrospect it becomes “I should have been in control and I wasn’t, and now it’s my fault that those people died.”
Drilling for potential critical incidents, with detailed emphasis on the mental/emotional side of the event as well as the tactics/logistics aspect, will go a long way toward lessening the severity of such occurrences. Understand that “poor-me” responses such as “What did I do to deserve this?” may well pop into a dispatcher’s head. Make sure to include in your emotional drill the acknowledgment that “Who I am” and “What I do” are two different things: Realize that if you do experience a critical incident, it is not because of who you are, but because of what you do. You become involved in a critical incident because of your job; part of that job should be knowing both its limitations and yours.
It is important for the dispatcher to realize that retrospect allows the luxury of time. During the actual event, because accuracy and speed are the hallmarks of emergency communication, the time pressure of the event is considerable. Make it clear that while there may well have been alternative ways to respond to an event, this does not mean that the other options necessarily would have been better or would have changed the outcome of the incident.
Resolution of the event and your role in it does happen eventually. It is likely to occur far more quickly if the department has a protocol for debriefing that includes an intervention within 24 to 72 hours after the incident.
AN ORGANIZATIONWIDE ATTITUDE
Obviously, if the department is insensitive to the needs of its personnel, recovery from a critical incident can be long and difficult. In some cases the process of recovery and return to an acceptable level of occupational function is never completed. Sometimes premature retirement or resignation results when the individual dispatcher feels he never again can function effectively in his position.
The insensitive department may feel relieved that the “problem” dispatcher is gone. What it fails to realize is that all his training and experience—a part of which may be the department’s investment-goes with him. It also has an adverse effect on the dispatchers left behind. If they spend the rest of their days worrying about making a mistake and being thrown to the wolves, chances are they will make mistakes.
If the “problem” dispatcher remains on the job, usually for financial reasons, he most likely will hesitate before making necessary quick decisions, call in sick more often, be difficult to work with, and display other signs of being trapped in a job he does not want.
It’s easier by far to establish an organizational attitude that gives the message “We ask that you give us the best you can. In the few cases where that’s not enough to control a given situation, we’ll help you look at it because
- we can learn from any mistakes that may have been made; and
- even if there were no mistakes, we acknowledge that you may well need assistance to overcome feelings of guilt, uselessness, or other responses that will adversely affect your life both on and off the job.”
By addressing your dispatchers’ problems of critical incidents, you will let them know that you value them and their work. You will also ensure that all the links in your community’s chain of fire protection are as strong as they possibly can be.
