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Day In The Life: Dispatch

(NEWS CENTER Maine)-- What's it like to be on the front line? To answer the phone when Mainers are having the worst day of their lives? In our 'Day in the life' series, we hung out in the Scarborough dispatch center with Joe Thornton. Joe has been dispatching for 15 years and during my time there, he was clearly able to multi-task, which is a must. Between handling police calls (which is his actual job), helping with fire and rescue calls, answering general calls, a lot can happen in a short amount of time.

"I get calls on Thanksgiving asking how long to cook a turkey so that it safe to eat, I get the calls wanting to know if school is open or closed." said Joe...

"The industry term we talk about is 7 1/2 hours of boredom followed by half an hour of sheer terror. We deal with this every day luckily the public only most of the time has to deal with this once or twice in a lifetime. We have a lot more experience with this. It’s probably one of the most important parts of the job especially the medical dispatch at world is to refocus the caller it’s a providing help until we can get responders there."

It takes a special skill-set to work in dispatch, you need communication skills, the ability to multi-task in a pressure situation, the ability to stay calm and collected while the person you are dealing with is likely very emotional, and so much more. They truly are the very first responders when crisis hits.

Lee-

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