Nerve Center Always Ready For Emergency

Frequently, commuters plugging along the Dulles Toll Road after a long workday, find themselves in a sea of red lights. Traffic is at a complete standstill. 

In the time it takes commuters to flip through radio stations, someone at the accident has called 9-1-1; the call has been routed to the county’s 9-1-1 Call Center; and call takers and dispatchers have pinpointed the approximate accident scene, determined how to respond and where the closest responders are. 

They have surveyed the scene using traffic cameras and by the time police, fire and rescue arrive at the scene they have a good idea of what to expect.

This rapidly planned response is made possible by the collaborative efforts of those at the county’s Department of Public Safety Communications or the 9-1-1 Call Center. 

The 9-1-1 Call Center is housed at the McConnell Public Safety and Transportation Operations Center. Located near West Ox Road and Lee Highway, the McConnell Center houses multiple agencies that function under one roof to improve public safety response, traffic management and manage the response to major emergencies. 

The other agencies housed in the McConnell Center, which opened in October 2008, include the Office of Emergency Management; Fairfax County Fire and Rescue and Police Departments; offices for the Virginia State Police; Virginia Department of Transportation’s Northern Region Transportation Operations Center; and FCPD’s Forensics facility. 

Fairfax County’s 9-1-1 Call Center is one of 10 largest in the United States and the largest 9-1-1 Call Center in Virginia. The center is responsible for answering all 9-1-1 emergency calls dialed in Fairfax County, including the towns of Herndon, Vienna and the city of Fairfax.

The operational floor of the 9-1-1 Call Center is the heart of the action and is staffed by 9-1-1 call takers, known as public safety communicators. In this operational area, public safety and emergency organizations put their minds together and share technology to address the round-the-clock emergency needs of the county. 

Display screens seen throughout the room show live views of traffic and incidents as VDOT staff help to manage traffic flows. If Virginia State Police need assistance in closing interstate lanes, VDOT is by their side manipulating electronic road signs and monitors. 

If Fairfax County Fire and Rescue have questions about what equipment is needed at a scene, VDOT can zoom traffic cameras into incident areas and provide a 360-degree view of the scene. The shared resources and planning has benefited residents in our area with shorter response times and better-prepared responders.

“Back in the olden days, 18 months ago, much of the on-site emergency response coordination between departments had to be completed by telephone at the dispatch center,” said Steve Souder, the 9-1-1 Call Center’s director. Sometimes this would require multiple phone calls back and forth. 

“Before cell phones, if an accident occurred on a highway, someone would have to drive to the next exit and get off to look for a pay phone,” Souder recalls.  “The caller had to have coins available to place a call and once the 9-1-1 call was placed, hoped they remembered approximately where and in which direction the accident took place.” 

Without today’s technology public safety communicators had no way to verify the location of the accident and responders were sent “searching” for the accident. Very often responders did not arrive on the scene until 20-30 minutes or more had passed.

Seventy percent of calls to the 9-1-1 Call Center come through wireless phones. Calls are automatically distributed to allow even distribution among the 12-15 public safety communicators on duty. 

When a 9-1-1 call arrives a map of the location along with a text screen immediately pops up on the communicator’s computer screen. Public safety communicator guides the caller through a series of questions like type of emergency, caller’s name and caller’s call back number and enter information into the system.

The call is automatically assigned a code for the type of emergency—police only, fire, basic life service—and as the communicator enters details, that information immediately becomes available to police, fire and rescue dispatchers who place calls to responders.

Since all police, fire and rescue units are equipped with global positioning systems, dispatchers can immediately tell who is closest to the emergency. The police department can immediately pull up a history of responses for a given address. Public safety communicators also have instructions on how to walk the caller through life-saving techniques until responders arrive. 

Communicators rarely have the chance to leave the building during their shift and their jobs involve a lot of pressure.

“Communicators have a very stressful job,” says Souder. “Employees are a captive audience while on duty. They are exposed to a steady dose of everyone else’s misery through most of the work day.”

Even though technology has enhanced their ability to perform, some of the tools, especially the traffic cameras, expose those working on the floor to horrors never seen before.

Because the pressures are high, there are opportunities to relieve stress at the center’s exercise facility. The staff is also very close and works as a family. Each day there is one big meal planned and cooked together by and for the on-duty staff.

There’s not a lot of down time at the 9-1-1 Call Center. Each year, the center receives about 500,000 emergency calls, plus another 500,000 non-emergency calls.

Answering 9-1-1 calls requires the ability to handle the more than 100 different languages spoken in Fairfax County. The county uses the services of Language Line headquartered in Monterey, CA to assist in taking the call.

The Office of Emergency Management, also housed in the same McConnell Center, oversees and activates the county's Emergency Operations Center during emergency incidents. It is equipped to receive and transmit U.S. Homeland Security and emergency information to state, regional and federal partners.