Dispatchers deliver for everyone

Around the newsroom this week we tossed around a joke about how, if you’re having a baby and can’t afford to go to the hospital, you can just call 911 and city of Palmer dispatchers will talk you through a home birth. Think of the money Valley parents could save, we opined through our snickers.

Jokes aside, dispatchers in Palmer are justifiably proud to have helped talk people through deliveries three times over the past three months. But their actions also should be a point of pride for our whole community.

Dispatch work takes a certain type of person, one who can remain calm in stressful situations and is a good at multitasking. And a dispatcher should probably also have the attitude expressed by Palmer’s most recent telephonic midwife, Sarah Beranek, featured on today’s front page.

“It’s usually the worst day of a person’s life, and I’m able to help them,” she said of the people who call 911.

The Frontiersman staff members are among those who have received help from 911 dispatchers on their worst days. A few years ago, we called for help after an accident at our business severed a man’s hand. We recall clearly the comforting sound of the sirens that day. Those shrill, unmistakable tones meant help — real life-saving help — was coming for the grievously injured man writhing and screaming in pain in our parking lot.

Lately, the Mat-Su Borough has roiled with some pretty passionate discussions about emergency services. The discussions revolve around medics and, to a lesser degree, firefighters.

If you’ve sat this one out, here’s a quick recap — in the wake of a ruling from the state, the Mat-Su Borough has capped responders’ hours to avoid paying retirement benefits for employees who work 30 hours or more a week.

Dispatchers don’t play into this. There are two dispatch centers in the Valley, one in Palmer and one in Wasilla. Employees of both work for their respective cities rather than for the borough.

But we find in today’s story about babies delivered over the phone further evidence of the exceptional work everyone in the system does on our behalf, be they dispatchers, medics, firefighters or rescue technicians.

What we know for certain is that on your worst day, you can punch in 911 and help will come because of the dedicated service of our friends and neighbors who work as dispatchers and emergency responders.

While we continue to work through the challenges of how to fairly compensate our emergency responders, another change waits on the horizon. The borough has signaled its intent to consolidate Palmer and Wasilla dispatch centers into a single operation.

Most days the life-saving work of local dispatchers goes unheralded. But stories like this about three dispatchers helping to bring babies into the world shine a welcome light on this important work.