They have to work weekends and holidays.īocanegra, now 36, also had mandatory overtime shifts. “We were chronically understaffed,” she said. The WorkloadĪs a dispatcher, Bocanegra routinely worked 10 to 12-hour night shifts. In Athens-Clarke County, the Central Communications Bureau received 108,830 emergency 911 calls in 2017, the report said.
They handle around 240 million calls in the United States every year, according to National Emergency Number Association (NENA).Ĭommunities in Georgia employ more than 3,000 dispatchers. The United States has around 95,000 police, fire and ambulance dispatchers throughout the country, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. They are responsible for sending help in emergency and non-emergency situations, but the job’s stress leads to high turnover rates. Why It’s Newsworthy: 911 dispatchers are the bridge between the public and first-responders. She enjoyed serving the community she grew up in, but the life of a dispatcher is an endurance test. In 2005, she decided to work at the communications center in her hometown of Oxnard, California, and continued working there for the next 11 years. She’d just finished her bachelor’s degree at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and debated whether to attend graduate school. When Megan Bocanegra started working as a 911 dispatcher, she expected it to be temporary.
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