It’s National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week

BANGOR, Maine (WABI) - Roughly 240 million 9-1-1 calls are made in the United States each year.

This week is dedicated to saying thanks to those who literally answer the call when people are in need.

“Dispatching is the eyes and the ears of the responding units,” said Theresa Perry, the Operations Manager at DPS Bangor Regional Communications Center.

They’re the unseen heroes tasked with giving vital information to first responders.

“We usually take about a hundred 9-1-1 calls a day,” Perry said.

Within a moment’s notice, they’re thrust into high stress situations.

“You know, there’s difficult days, there’s things that you’ll never forget that you hear, but then there’s really good days where you know that you’ve sent help to somebody and you’ve saved them from what could possibly be the worst day of their life. It’s a good feeling when you hang up the phone and be able to sit back and go, wow, I just saved that person,” Perry said.

This week is National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week, a time to celebrate the life saving work these people do behind the scenes.

“It’s important that they know that people appreciate them. People see law enforcement all the time and they’re always thanking them, but we don’t go out in uniforms that show that we’re dispatchers, so we don’t get people to pull us aside and say, hey, thanks for what you do. So we just are voices to people, we’re not faces. So this is a good time for people to be able to appreciate what they do and be able to show people what we do on a daily basis and let them get the appreciation that they deserve,” said Perry.