A head-on crash last week in Columbia County that killed four people and injured three others, including a one-year-old girl, is highlighting the toll traumatic calls can take on the people who answer 911.
Dawn Buchinger, a Columbia County 911 dispatcher and supervisor, has been answering emergency calls in Columbia County for 31 years. She was the first person to answer calls last Monday night as two cars crashed head-on in Claverack.
“And the phone line just lit up,” Buchinger said.
Buchinger said the first calls that came in were not from witnesses, but from phones with crash detection. “The first, I believe, three calls that we got were all automatic crash notifications with no voice,” she said.
Once witnesses began calling, “we learned that there was one fatality at the scene. It wasn’t until a little later on that we were told that there was a total of four. So that was pretty heart wrenching for us,” she said.
Buchinger said she stayed focused in the moment because she had to keep working through the emergency. “You just go on to I got to get this done mode. You don’t really have time to process feelings,” she said. “I will say that when I was told there was a child involved, my heart sank.”
Buchinger said she was occupied by the crash for nearly five hours that night. The next day, the county organized a critical incident stress debriefing for responders involved. “It’s basically for us to relieve the tension of what we heard, saw, or felt during the incident,” she said. “We’re always taught to help others, but sometimes first responders forget to help themselves.”
Buchinger said the stress can build over time if it is not addressed.
“If we don’t deal with ourselves, how can we help others?” she said.
Inside the 911 center, Buchinger said she and her coworkers and boss talk about the calls they are handling and how those calls are affecting them. She said staff use different ways to manage stress, including a walking pad, listening to music, watching comedy videos and relying on pets for comfort. “All that stuff seems so minimal, but it does make a difference,” she said.
The interview comes during National Public Safety Telecommunicators Awareness Week, a time recognizing 911 dispatchers and other emergency communications workers. Buchinger said it is a job that is sometimes not taken as seriously as firefighters or police officers, even though the calls can be traumatic. “You know, people screaming, people crying because somebody’s not breathing. It’s all that stuff that is traumatic for us,” she said.
Buchinger said she is still thinking a fair amount about last week’s deadly crash and what, if anything, she could have done differently — and whether it would have mattered. “You know, so it’s just kind of, you feel like you want to do something more than what we’re already doing. But I can only do what I can do from behind the scenes,” she said. She knows the outcome is not something she can blame on herself.
Buchinger said mental health education has become a bigger focus at the 911 center in recent years. She said employees also have access to wellness resources through the county Employee Assistance Program.