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Knox County 911 director Laura: 911 calls up, mental-health and suicide calls rise as department pursues training and NextGen upgrades
Summary
Laura, Knox County 911 director, told commissioners that overall calls for service dipped slightly while 911 calls increased; wireless calls dominated (1,317), VoIP accounted for 157 and landlines 29. She described staffing, training and NextGen 911 plans and noted one completed suicide last month.
Laura, Knox County 911 director, reported to the Knox County Commissioners on Oct. 9 that total calls for service have fallen slightly this year while 911 emergency calls have increased.
"You can see the total calls for service has gone down just a little bit. But our 911 calls went up," Laura said, and she told commissioners the busiest day for 911 calls was Tuesday and the busiest time was about 6 p.m. She provided a breakdown of call sources, saying 29 911 calls came from landlines, 157 from VoIP and 1,317 from wireless devices.
The director flagged rising mental-health contacts and a recent fatality: "We did have 1 completed suicide last month," she said, adding that the year-to-date number already exceeds last year's total.
Why it matters: the county's 911 center is managing a shift in call patterns and higher acuity contacts while working to stabilize staffing and upgrade location technology. Laura said the center relies on wireless-location technology for callers who cannot provide a location, and that connecting to the state's NextGen 911 system is expected to improve interoperability.
Laura outlined workforce and training steps the department is taking. She described ongoing on-the-job training across four stations (Acre, Byron EMS, the County wall station and the City wall station) with roughly six weeks on each station and formal classroom training requirements: a 40-hour telecommunicator course followed by a 32-hour medical-dispatch course, typically taught on-site by a certified supervisor or Nicole, a department instructor.
The department is also pursuing local recruitment and training pipelines. A commissioner noted a six-week 911 dispatch academy at Clark State Community College; Laura said she and Nicole have discussed creating a dispatch program at the adult career technical center with Dana and reviewed simulator costs to build local training capacity.
On staffing and schedules, Laura said dispatchers will move to an alternate schedule of two 12-hour and two 8-hour shifts starting this Saturday; she reported about 95% of staff are enthusiastic about the change. She also noted the department has not had regular part-time hires in recent years but would reintroduce part-timers once training pipeline capacity allows. Laura attributed turnover to a range of factors, including candidates finding higher pay elsewhere and the intensive nature of training.
The director also highlighted upcoming outreach: staff will participate in an Oct. 15 public-information/media tabletop exercise and two dispatchers will attend the Bremerton School Career and Hobby Day to distribute educational materials and explain dispatch duties.
Next steps: Laura said the county's GIS staff (Justin) has begun work for NextGen integration and she expects the connection to the state NextGen system to be completed "next year sometime." Commissioners thanked Laura for the update; no formal board action was taken on the 911 report during the meeting.
