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SALT LAKE CITY — Many of us have heard that chilling audio of the calls coming into the Aurora Police Department's dispatch center following the mass shooting at a movie theater Friday.
Callers in Aurora were frantic — some yelling, some shocked — but the dispatchers were calm. At Valley Emergency Communications (VECC) in Salt Lake City, dispatchers say staying calm is part of their training.
If we can just try and keep calm — and not monotone, but just as professional as we can — then the more chances that not the caller is going to respond to that.
–Mindy Burch, VECC dispatcher
Dispatcher Mindy Burch has been has been involved in her share of high-stress emergency situations. Friday, she was training new 911 dispatchers how to deal with those situations.
"You never know what call you're going to get," Burch said.
That's why she and her team train — especially when it comes to staying calm.
"If we can just try and keep calm — and not monotone, but just as professional as we can — then the more chances that not the caller is going to respond to that," Burch said.
In the Friday morning shooting in Aurora, firemen and policemen were frantic. But the dispatchers stayed calm.
KSL News played the 911 audio of the incident for Geana Randall, a supervisor at Valley Emergency Communications. She's been there too, and recognized the calmness right away.
"It's important to these officers that they have a calm voice," Randall said.
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"We have the benefit of not having that visual," Randall explained. "The officers, they're seeing chaos. They're facing trauma. They're seeing people with horrible fear in their face."
When it comes to an emergency, especially like the one in Aurora, dispatchers say the training is what kicks in.
"When you're in that call, that call completely engulfs you," Bruch said. "You don't think of anything else."
Dispatchers says the toughest part is sometimes not having that closure. Often, they don't know if somebody they helped made it through OK, but that's part of the job.
