Allegheny County’s 911 center has call takers and dispatchers working 12-hour days.
Fewer people are applying for positions at Westmoreland County’s Public Safety Office.
In Beaver County, Emergency Services is short five full-time workers.
Virtually no industry has been spared the struggle of finding new recruits, but 911 call centers — which operate 24 hours a day and provide help to people in many life-or-death scenarios — are strained with a smaller workforce putting in more daily hours as employees get sick amid the rapid spread of the omicron variant of the coronavirus that triggers the COVID-19 infection.
“We’ve never been in this place before,” said Eric Brewer, director of Beaver County Emergency Services, which manages the county’s 911 dispatch operations center.
Call takers and dispatchers at Beaver County’s site would ideally fill 18 shifts a day to cover a 24-hour period. Instead, fewer workers are working longer hours — sometimes as many as 16 — to fill the gaps.
“That’s something I personally don’t like to do, because the job is stressful enough,” Mr. Brewer said. “To add that stress onto somebody, not knowing when they’re going to get home, is extra stressful.”
“These people have families,” he added. “They want to see their kids’ birthdays and spend anniversaries and holidays with them, but sometimes we have to do what we have to do to fill the shift.”
Fewer people answering phones also means more multitasking, said Rick Grejda, business agent for SEIU Local 668, the union representing Allegheny County 911 dispatchers.
“That is what makes this very dangerous,” Mr. Grejda said. “It puts the 911 callers in harm’s way if I can’t devote 100% attention, and it does the same with the field units.”
Allegheny County is budgeted for 259 full-time dispatchers, but the county is currently working with 226. Of those, 15 people are off due to COVID-19 infections or exposures, said Matt Brown, chief of Allegheny County Emergency Services.
It’s also a field that isn’t capable of working from home, Mr. Grejda said, with limited satellite communication and the need for an on-site command structure.
“There’s no hopes of 911 telework being able to work remotely anytime soon or in coming years,” he said. “That technology is years away.”
“No one can just walk in the door and do this job,” he said. “You could walk in the door and apply, and say, ‘I used to dispatch for New York City police,’ and we would still require you to go through up to 16 weeks of training to know how to operate any Allegheny system.”
Where a job posting three years ago would result in anywhere from 600 to 700 applicants within a month, a current job posting brought in a pool of just 187 applicants after three months. Only 56 of those applicants chose to schedule a test, and just nine of them passed.
Lack of applicants has been most alarming for Westmoreland County, too.
“People aren’t really applying for these jobs,” said Roland “Bud” Mertz, director of Westmoreland County 911.
Gene Good, Westmoreland’s 911 operations chief, said the stress of the job is also having an impact on the lack of applicants. Call takers not knowing the results of the calls they take is a big factor, he said.
“We could take that call, where a [dispatcher] is giving CPR instructions to somebody,” Mr. Mertz said. “The ambulance gets there, [the dispatcher] disconnects from the call, the ambulance gets taken to the hospital and they don’t know the outcome. So I think that plays a role in some of the stress that is seen nationwide with 911 centers.”
But unlike a restaurant, where less staff might mean fewer operating hours, the emergency dispatch center can’t close or slow down.
“I don’t have that luxury at 911,” Allegheny’s Mr. Brown said. “We have a responsibility to serve the public with the best efficiency in the shortest amount of time. Our focus is always to answer calls in under 15 seconds.”
Fewer people answering phones means longer call answering time, he said.
Employee retention has always been a problem in 911 centers across the county, Mr. Good said. “I think that COVID has brought that into the spotlight a lot.”
Although the stressors facing these centers haven’t hit a critical load, the centers are still struggling under these changing conditions. New recruits are being brought on, too, even though the training process takes several weeks.
“Public safety is changing,” Beaver’s Mr. Brewer said. “This [pandemic] has changed the workforce in general, and we’re not immune to that, either.”
“I think the public can clearly see how essential 911 operations are,” he said.
“[We are] looking for those who are ready and willing to serve for the greater good of the public,” he added.
Mick Stinelli: mstinelli@post-gazette.com; 412-263-1869; and on Twitter @MickStinelli
First Published: January 17, 2022, 12:32 a.m.
