Deborah Corrao / L’Observateur / June 16, 1999

When tragedy strikes it is usually an anonymous voice we turn to first-the voice on the other end of the line when we call the 9-1-1 emergency number. Many times we must rely on that anonymous voice toget us through immediate danger or to help in times of crisis or disaster.

At those times we want to know that our call will be handled quickly, calmly and compassionately.

Lt. Anna Cox, 36, is the Director of Communications for the St. John ParishSheriff’s Department. She supervises the seven men and five women whorotate 12-hour shifts at the emergency dispatch center.

Since the arrival of 9-1-1, those dispatchers handle all emergency calls for the sheriff’s office as well as communications with road deputies and ambulance services. When disaster strikes it is those men and womenwho leave their families behind to ensure the well-being of the citizens of St. John Parish.Lt. Cox and Kirt Tregre were working a double shift during HurricaneAndrew in 1992 when, Tregre recalls, the first came in about a possible tornado.

“Someone called to report a tornado had overturned a trailer in Orange Loop,” Tregre recalls.

It happened about 9 at night.

From the first call, dispatchers tracked the deadly twister as it wound its way through LaPlace and Reserve and answered a barrage of calls as it touched down, destroying houses and buildings on its path.

“You couldn’t find a dry eye in the control room,” Cox says. “We knew wecouldn’t help anyone until the tornado was gone. We couldn’t help anyoneright away.”One of the dispatchers working the double shift that night was pregnant at the time. During the night she got a call that the tornado had torn down awall at the home where her other two children were spending the night with a relative.

The dispatcher, not allowed to leave the control room during a disaster, monitored her children’s progress as they were moved from that house to a shelter.

All dispatchers agree that it takes a special personality to handle their work.

“Not everyone can do it,” says Cox, “especially if you’re the type of person to get hysterical or panic in an emergency.”Cox, a 17-year veteran with the Sheriff’s Department had not been on the job long when she faced the first real test of her ability to handle tragedy.

As a young deputy, she had been called in to work overtime when she picked up a call to find a hysterical woman on the other end.

“Her daughter had been shot by her son-in-law in a domestic dispute,” Cox says, “and she was screaming that the man was walking out the door, his wife’s limp body in his arms, presumably going to get medical care.”The man drove away. The caller was so hysterical as the man drove awaywith her daughter that she was not able to tell Cox which way he had turned on River Road. Units were dispatched to St. Charles Parish and toReserve.

“The next call I got was from St. Charles Parish Sheriff’s Department,”says Cox, “telling me that the officer going in that direction had been involved in an accident, possibly fatal. All I can remember is SheriffJohnson standing behind me with his hand (See HELP, page 4B) on my shoulder.”It turns out that the deputy, Troy Bailey, had survived the accident. Theperson in the other car involved in the accident had been killed.

Deputies finally located the man who had shot his wife in Reserve. He hadmistakenly attempted to take her to a hospital that was no longer in business. The woman had died on the way.Cox managed to stay calm during the tense situation, which she affirms that a good dispatcher must do at all times.

“We try to calm people down,” says Sgt. Kirt Tregre, 31. “We have to talkin soft tones and take control of the call.”It isn’t easy to do when the victim is one of your own.

“The worst thing that has ever happened to us here was when Deputy Barton Granier was shot,” Cox says.

Granier was gunned down in January of 1996 by a suspect in several convenience store robberies.

“It was so hard to sit here and try to piece things together when you know it is out of your control,” Cox says.

One of the most important things the public needs to know, emergency operators say, is that any routine call can put an officer in danger.

“A simple alarm going off could be a burglary in progress,” she says. “Anofficer can walk into a battle during a domestic dispute.”Tregre says many callers are reluctant to admit if weapons are involved in a complaint.

“Someone may call in to tell us there’s a burglary in progress,” he says.

“We have to ask if the caller has armed himself. It’s possible that adeputy investigating a burglary complaint being mistaken for the burglar.

We want to know if the caller has a gun.”The deputies who man emergency operations find fulfillment in knowing that they are able to help people in trouble ever though it is often a thankless task.

“What we do for the public is very rewarding,” says Cox. “But everybody’scaught up in their personal lives nowadays. Most of the time people arejust trying to handle their own emergencies.”The biggest problem, dispatchers agree, is that residents do not display correct addresses on their homes. When a 9-1-1 call comes in, thelocation of the call is printed out on a computer monitor.

Response time is slower if deputies are unable to locate a house because there is an incorrect number or no number displayed on the house at all.

Tregre, who is the person who answers calls on his shift and transfers information to a dispatcher who will locate and communicate with emergency personnel by radio, says callers need to be aware that more information may be needed from them not only to help the citizen but to protect the responding officer.

“We want people to stay on the line even if they feel they need to hide in a closet,” says Cox. “If the caller is a victim of a burglary in progress ordomestic violence, she should leave the phone off the hook so we can monitor what’s going on. We need to know what kind of situation anofficer is walking into.”Since most of the officers who work in emergency operations have families of their own, their job can be especially difficult if a caller is a child.

“Our hearts are touched when children are witnesses to domestic violence,” says Cox, a mother of two. “We try to calm them down and getthem to stay on the phone until we can respond.”

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