You want help immediately when you have an emergency and need to call 9-1-1.
The people who answer those calls are sounding the alarm about a shortage of workers.
WAAY-31 learned how, in Morgan County, they’re dealing with a shortage of 9-1-1 operators.
We spent the afternoon at the Morgan County 9-1-1 Center and it's easy to see why the job is so stressful.
The stress is often compounded because of long hours and a lack of experienced applicants is causing a shortage of operators.
"Stay on the phone with me, don't hang up. They're on their way okay," says one dispatcher.
Phones ring here all times of the day and night of people calling about everything from a house fire, to complaints about their neighbors.
Right now, Morgan county has about two dozen employees answering 9-1-1 calls.
The 9-1-1 center director told us she’d like to staff another five dispatchers, but the job market is tight.
"With the current economy, it's very optimal right now to be able to make a move to a job that would be considered less stressful, as well as normal hours," said Jeanie Pharis.
People who come on board deal with long shifts involving 12-hour days, stress and anxiety over the incoming calls they take and just this job takes a lot of training before someone answers a call where lives could be at risk.
"The process can take anywhere between 3, 4, 5 months just to get one employee trained up. So when we lose an employee, it takes us a long amount of time to be able to train somebody else, to replace that position that we've lost," said Pharis.
Pharis also told us a lot of people always want to help and think they can be a dispatcher, but she says it's not for the faint-hearted, and that's okay.
"The job will change you...No matter what kind of personality you have, it will change you," she said.
The staffing shortage is not to a level where public safety is at risk and Pharis told us your emergency calls will be answered.
She and her administrative staff have come up with a creative schedule to make sure of that.
We asked Pharis if the pandemic caused in any uptick in the volume of calls they received, and she told us it actually dropped and helped them in the end.
