Answering 911: Life In The Hot Seat

[x635 4,066]

New book out that seems really interesting. I'm going to pick up a copy.

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearc...5696&x=49221908

From the Publisher

You answer a call from a fourteen-year-old boy asking for someone to arrest his mother, who is smoking crack in their bathroom. You talk with him until the cops arrive, making sure there are no weapons around and learning that his favorite subject in school is lunch. Five minutes later, you have to deal with someone complaining about his neighbor's clarinet practice. What is it like to be on the receiving end of desperate calls for help . . . every day? Caroline Burau, a former newspaper reporter and nursing student who couldn't stand the sight of blood, takes a job as an emergency dispatcher because she likes helping people. But on-the-job training at the comm center proves to be more than she bargained for. As she adjusts to a daily life of catastrophe and comedy, domestics and drunks, cops and robbers, junk food and sarcasm, lost cats and suicides, she discovers that crisis can become routine, that coworkers can be mean—that she must continue to care and, at times, learn how to let go.

From The Critics

Publishers Weekly

I want to save lives, but I'm willing to settle for just not killing anybody," confides this suburban Minneapolis author about being a rookie 911 dispatch operator . In simple prose that is often crass and amateurish, Burau recounts moments of terror and incompetence among her colleagues: one dispatcher plays computer games while listening to a suicidal caller ; others send medics to the wrong address while an acid-burn victim suffers. Cynical and bitter after two years on the job, Burau has harsh words for callers who report cell phones stolen from unlocked cars; a "frequent flyer" (someone "always in crisis") who wants the police to baby-sit her kids; and a woman whose grisly trailer-home suicide is relayed by her hysterical 12-year-old daughter. Recalling her abortive attempts as nursing student, reporter for a community paper and locksmith and, in sordid detail, her addiction to crack and an abusive boyfriend, Burau has been in recovery for 11 years and has married and adopted a stepdaughter she adores but worries about failing. Although this clearly isn't her intention, Burau's honest memoir of the 911 trenches will make readers queasy about the quality of emergency service personnel in their own communities. (Aug. 15) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

[JBE 328]

I look forward to reading this one. It probably won't make the author too popular with their colleagues, but most books don't. If it opens the eyes of the public to seeing that the 911 system can be pretty flawed in a lot of places, it can't be a bad thing. Secondly, it will definitely give the reader an idea of what sometimes goes on over on the other side of the radio.

[Guest]

that seems really interesting, as a dispatcher i am going to have to get my hands on a copy of that book!

[Guest]

I'd like to get a copy myself - It'd be nice if all the fire departments also purchase a copy for those people who have never been to a 911 Center and don't know our side of the radio.

[JBE 328]

PS, I'm in the preliminary stages of writing my book.

[x635 4,066]

Haven't had a chance to read this book after getting in from BN.com, but thumbed through it and it seemed really good and honest about the job. Looking foward to reading it.

Edited September 8, 2006 by x635

[AFS1970 504]

Without reading it, I would say that 2 years is not long enough to become bitter and cynical. It's taken me 17 1/2 to be that way. And now comes a book by one of the crack heads that help make us that way. Someone who failed at several other jobs. That is a critical problem with hiring dispatchers, is there a Police or Fire department that would hire a Police Officer or Firefighter who had such a past? NO! But hey it only a dispatcher so we can get that wierd kid down the street who never bathes and doesn't talk that much. Then Chiefs seem honestly surprised when there are competancey problems. Now someone who prbably didn't succeed in this career is writing a book about what kind of screw ups we all are. The stories that sell books are not the onew that show the professionalism than can exist in a well run dispatch center. I don't think I'll be jumping aboard the bandwagon on this one.

[x635 4,066]

Without reading it, I would say that 2 years is not long enough to become bitter and cynical. It's taken me 17 1/2 to be that way. And now comes a book by one of the crack heads that help make us that way. Someone who failed at several other jobs. That is a critical problem with hiring dispatchers, is there a Police or Fire department that would hire a Police Officer or Firefighter who had such a past? NO! But hey it only a dispatcher so we can get that wierd kid down the street who never bathes and doesn't talk that much. Then Chiefs seem honestly surprised when there are competancey problems. Now someone who prbably didn't succeed in this career is writing a book about what kind of screw ups we all are. The stories that sell books are not the onew that show the professionalism than can exist in a well run dispatch center. I don't think I'll be jumping aboard the bandwagon on this one.

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Dispatchers often have short career lifespans due to high burnout conditions in many comm centers. They also often come from a long work history.Don't judge a book by it's cover.