CouveCast episode 8 Be Ready Vancouver Part 3

Join us in our final episode of the Be Ready Vancouver series. This episode I talk with Tanya Wollstein, Acting Lieutenant with the Vancouver Police Department and Cassandra Deering a former 9-1-1 dispatch operator about how emergency services helps residents in the event of a disaster. 

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:00

Welcome to CouveCast, the City of Vancouver's official podcast, hosted by Steve Harris. Each episode is a mix of city insights, stories, behind the scenes, and hopefully a few laughs along the way. No jargon, just real talk with the people shaping Vancouver's future. One episode at a time.

Speaker 3 0:19

Well, welcome to CouveCast, the City of Vancouver's official podcast. I'm your host, Steve Harris, and today we will be talking about Be Ready Vancouver, a new preparedness initiative to help prepare and support our community in the event of an emergency. Today is part three of our final segment of this series, which will focus on emergency services and dispatch during a disaster. I'm joined by Tanya Wollstein, acting lieutenant with the Vancouver Police Department, and Cassandra Deering, Training Manager with the Clark Regional Emergency Services Agency, or CRESA, and former 911 dispatcher. Thank you both for joining me.

Speaker 4 0:54

Hello. Thanks for having us.

Speaker 3 0:56

So, Cassandra, to start off, um in emergencies, one of the first calls people are going to make is 911. They will likely be experiencing panic. And as a former dispatcher, how important is it for you to or a dispatcher to keep calm when someone on the other end of the line is obviously panicked?

Speaker 1:16

Well, we kind of sum it up to if I panic, nobody gets help. So they're calling us and we're supposed to be there for them. And our job is to dispatch whether it's fire, medical, or police for them. Yeah.

Speaker 3 1:30

And one thing I want to mention, we kind of talked about this uh briefly before we started recording, but it's not always necessary to call 911. Um there could be situations where, especially if something like uh something big big did happen, you want to keep those lines pretty open for something that's really disastrous.

Speaker 1:47

Right. Like I don't want to discourage anybody. We're here to help. Um, but just m reminding the public that something is big happens, whether it's an earthquake, you know, you might have patients that are calling and that actually have medical issues that are going to take higher priority than something happening that's physically happening to your house.

Speaker 3 2:06

Yes. Um and what what are some of those other options if they don't call 911? You you talked about that they could call, for instance, if it wasn't uh they needed 911. What are some of the other numbers or or resources?

Speaker 2:20

We have 311, which is a non-emergency. Um they come in at two different lines, but the 911 dispatchers do answer those calls. So please be patient with the 911 dispatchers because they are fielding the 911 calls. Um but there are other resources depending on what the situation is. Uh, for instance, you know, maybe there's an earthquake and your lights are out. You could call PUD. At the same time, though, what if somebody's in the house that has a medical issue? We do want to hear that call. Maybe somebody is dependent on some their medical equipment working when the lights are out. That's something that's going to come back to us.

Speaker 3 2:55

Okay. So really kind of a case-by-case thing.

Speaker 2:57

Yes.

Speaker 3 2:58

Um, and when residents are are trying to actively be prepared for an emergency, how like they're making an emergency kit. How helpful is that for both of you when when they've obviously done some preparing already versus someone who hasn't even started?

Speaker 3:17

Well, I know in the previous podcast, Scott talked about being prepared, having a home emergency kit, having a car emergency kit. One thing I always tell my family don't wait till the morning to fill up the gas. Make sure you have at least half a tank of gas so that just in case there's some type of evacuation, we've had major fires in the area where people have had to evacuate. Um, but just building those things little by little and understanding from a first responder standpoint, police are there to protect life over property first.

Speaker 3 3:47

Okay. Um, and then uh so Tanya, for you, uh if there was a major disaster, um uh what kind of things would police be most um concerned about? Obviously panic, but but who knows what people will be doing? Um what what kind of things would you be focusing on um in that type of situation?

Speaker 4 4:13

In any kind of major disaster, it's gonna be life safety. That's that's our number one priority is life safety issues. So the way that we will be dispatched out is gonna be prioritized based on that, and our response will be prioritized based on life safety. So we will be responding to the highest level life safety issues, uh, and we probably frankly will not respond for a significant amount of time to strictly property issues, things that do not involve life safety until all of the life safety calls have been addressed.

Speaker 3 4:45

Okay. And how helpful is it for the police department uh in a situation like that to be able to rely on, say, dispatch or emergency management to filter down what needs information that you might need in the field?

Speaker 4 4:59

It's incredibly important. We work with dispatch hand in hand every single day. We would be lost without dispatch. There's nothing that we could ever do without dispatch. Um, they prioritize our calls for us, they help us know where we need to go, when we need to go. They're gathering the information. They truly are our very first responder to most crimes. Um, we come in in a disaster, we may end up helping fire uh primarily rather than our typical role of responding to criminal activity. And things can change if there's looting or other activities. But our our number one priority is gonna be set from dispatch. Um they really do all of the prioritization and all of the sort of segmenting of calls for us so that we can get to where we need to go as fast as we can.

Speaker 3 5:45

And then once you have that communication from dispatch, um if there's a number of you on the field say, then you have communication uh between police, fire, and whomever to sort of an umbrella to get to help each other out in that situation.

Speaker 4 5:59

Absolutely. Uh we have a coordinated response, and I know that's fairly unique about our 911 dispatch, is that they dispatch for police, fire, and EMS. So we have a very coordinated system because everyone's being dispatched from the same place.

Speaker 3 6:15

Okay. So they're all uh up to speed, so to speak.

Speaker 6:18

Right. We're all in the same room, roughly. So you have I think Clark County has about 527,000 people in. And so we're good size. Yeah, we're dispatching for all things, for all things police, all things fire, and um some EMS. But the good thing I really love, like she touched on, is that I might take a 911 call of a missing child. The dispatcher can then relay that information and it's gonna go out to several units to go look for this child. But then we can let our emergency management know and they can send out a public alert to notify the public that this is going on so that other people can be on the lookout as well.

Speaker 3 6:54

That's great to have all those resources. So, so and you mentioned that, so just to kind of build off of your your comment there, but how helpful is that to help have dispatch and emergency management in the same building, essentially?

Speaker 7:06

It's so helpful because sometimes the call volume is so high, we may not have time to do the page outs. We're not trained on the public alert, so we have people dedicated to that, that is their specific job, and so that's helpful. And they they are able to do other things as far as coordinating with the sergeants on scene, uh the detectives, or anybody that needs to come in as well.

Speaker 3 7:28

Okay. Um so with a major emergency, if something were to happen, hopefully never ever in our lifetime, but if it did, uh what does that look like for dispatch? I mean, are are lines probably gonna be tied up? Is it gonna be tough for people to get through? And if it is tough for people to get through, uh what options do they have if they have to wait for an open line to get through?

Speaker 7:54

Well, um, thankfully we haven't had a we've had major incidents, but when I think of big events, I like talking about earthquakes.

Speaker 3 8:02

Something major, yeah. Something major catastrophic, right?

Speaker 8:05

Yeah, so lines, that's the first thing to go up, call volume. People panic and they don't know what to do. They may even have an emergency kit at the house, but their house just shook and they like need somebody to tell them what to do. So sometimes we are not necessarily sending them help. We are the calm voice at on the other end of the phone to help them kind of calm down and give them information and resources that they can utilize at that time. You may experience some longer times and holding. We might place you on hold if it's not an emergency. In some situations, especially if it's not life-threatening, you might be told to call back or have we'll have somebody call you back later.

Speaker 3 8:39

Yeah. How important is that? Um, especially in a situation like that. Uh the the very few times I've called 911, the person always sounds very uh reasoned and mild-mannered. How important is it to keep that um that voice of reason for people that are panicking on the other end of the phone?

Speaker 8:57

We understand that it's their emergency. Like I've had to call 911 before, and I did not sound as calm as I was when I was taking the call. So in that moment, we understand that people are panicked, they're desperate, they don't know what to do in that situation, and it's our responsibility to help them at that moment. Whether it is sending police, whether it's sending fire or EMS or walking them through or giving them some type of specific instruction. It is so important that dispatchers and sometimes when we think of 911, we think customer service. It's not customer service isn't always hi, how can I help you? It's giving specific instructions that are gonna save your life. So our my voice might be firm. I might sound from a public standpoint, not necessarily very customer, very customer service, but at that same point, when your life's on the line, it doesn't matter.

Speaker 3 9:48

And especially if there are other people waiting to get through, you probably want to get through the the current call as quickly as possible.

Speaker 9:54

While we want to acknowledge people in their moment, we do have to move on and answer other calls for those that are actually calling and that have a specific emergency and need help right away.

unknown 10:04

Yeah.

Speaker 3 10:05

Uh what about something that sounds like it's gonna be it could be something kind of major, but then it ends up being almost a false alarm. Um do you still prepare for it in the event that it could be real? I mean, what how do you attack that?

Speaker 10:21

Well, 911 works with City of Vancouver uh fire and police. Yeah, they do active drills once actually several times a year, and then we're invited to to dispatch for them or just help coordinate um from a dispatch. And so we prepare for the worst while hoping we don't ever have to experience it. But I think we work so well collaboratively every year to prepare for the worst. We've experienced, you know, from 2020 when we had COVID and we had all the riots, and we've worked a lot together and we've learned some valuable lessons that we're incorporating now on how to handle things.

Speaker 3 10:57

How how important and helpful, like you just mentioned, is it to um practice drills on a regular basis for anything that could happen? How how how effective are those drills and and what can you walk away from um practicing something like that just in case?

Speaker 4 11:12

I think you'll you hear police officers refer to I've I've remembered my training or I my training kicked in, phrases like this, and that's why we do it, right? Because our the way our brains work, we're gonna go back into our little lizard brain or our you know our limbic system, yeah, and we're gonna respond to what we know. And so if we have something that we've drilled over and over again, we've practiced it, we've coordinated it, we're not gonna have to think through it at the time and come up with new or novel solutions. It's just this is what I do, and my training's kicking in. That is what helps us respond efficiently and effectively.

Speaker 3 11:46

Yeah. Have there been situations where you may have done a drill one time or another and walked away thinking, oh what? You know what? This worked out better than last time, doing it this way.

Speaker 4 11:55

Yeah, I think we've learned from many things. You know, active shooter is one that we have we've seen a huge evolution in law enforcement from essentially Columbine and the initial response there. We learned a lot of things as law enforcement in general, but we've updated practices over time. We we try to be science-based, force science, other things like this, and we also try to look at all other past incidents. So, what police do quite often is we do like a post-in-event analysis, even when it's not our event. So we're gonna look at other places, how they've responded, try to take what is good from that and what needed maybe improvement or could have been improved from that and apply it here and apply it to our training so that every time that we go do something, we're doing not just our best practices from what we've learned from prior events, but from national and international events. What can we take from that and how can we respond best? So that's and that's one of the best practices, is what Cass talked about, which is coordinated efforts. Everything we do is coordinated effort with other agencies, with dispatch, with with the community. Everything needs to be coordinated in order to truly be effective.

Speaker 3 13:00

I'm guessing, like you just said, I'm guessing that's vital to have that coordination.

Speaker 2 13:04

Absolutely.

Speaker 3 13:42

Um, um I'm sure it's easy for people to panic. Um especially if they're directly affected by whatever the emergency whatever the disaster is. What advice can you give um about staying calm and working with each other in your community to try and get through whatever it is that's happening?

Speaker 4 14:07

Yeah, I would say the same thing that holds true for police holds true for everyone. If you are prepared, you have a kit, you have actually done the drill, right? That's why we do the fire drills and we do the, you know, the earthquake drills. Yeah, these gate plans, all those things, even at a very personal level, if you have those things prepared and you run through them, which I know is really easy to not do, but we can put it on our calendars and like twice a year we go through. Um, have your kit thoughtfully placed. If you have it someplace that you're never gonna get to uh if something happens, that's not great. Have it in a place you can easily access. Think about how these things might roll out and be prepared. I think it's much easier to stay calm if you have a plan in place and if you have the supplies that you need. And you expect, hey, I might have a big delay in a 911. I'm really gonna need to be as self-reliant as possible because it will be everyone asking for services all at once. So those things can really, really help on an individual basis and a family basis, uh, school basis, everything, everyone is can be as prepared individually as possible, that will help the entire community.

unknown 15:15

Yeah.

Speaker 3 15:15

And I'm assuming uh we talked about this in our last episode a little bit with emergency management, but um, depending on the scale of how big the emergency might be, uh once you kind of get sort of a handle on things, I'm guessing there's sort of a level of of um, you know, where it starts to kind of go down and it's not as much of an emergency as it was once you kind of get things contained.

Speaker 4 15:39

Definitely. Yeah, you're gonna have your life safety issues, and at some point those life safety issues will have been addressed, and we can kind of move to like what we might call from a priority one call, which would be our life safety, yeah. Um, maybe down to a priority two call um where we're maybe we don't have a current life safety, but it's still pretty serious, and so on and so forth. So that's why dispatch gives us a a nicely tiered system.

Speaker 16:03

So the way the calls come in, um, they're depending on the call, they're prioritized by call type. So for instance, maybe a disturbance with the weapon is gonna be a priority one and we're sending everybody while somebody just stole a gnome off my porch 10 minutes ago, but I don't know who did it is not gonna be a high priority at all. Right. Um, but some advice I would give it starts with yourself, being prepared, not just at home, but being at work. As dispatchers, we have a card that we use that we turn in. So if something is happening on the floor, there's somebody that's gonna be designated to go call and check on our family members. Okay. Thinking about the the worst case scenario. What if something big does happen and the phones don't work?

Speaker 3 16:46

I what if phones are down?

Speaker 16:47

I can't call you locally. Do you have an out-of-state contact? Do you have a relative in New York that everybody can call and check into? So thinking like outside the box, um out of your bubble. Yeah, you know, it's comfort. And if you feel the need to put something off, don't because that's gonna keep you unprepared. I noticed in the last episode Jordan stated buying a little thing at a time, making a goal to do something once a month, making it a goal once a quarter or every six months to do a drill.

Speaker 3 17:17

Like it doesn't have to be overwhelming. Yeah, attack a little bit at a time.

Speaker 17:21

Yeah, and being prepared, like something goes down and you're told to evacuate and your gas tank is on E. I always I stress that so much. You want to be always prepared to be able to go because you just never know at any given time.

Speaker 3 17:35

Yeah, I on our first segment, we've talked to a couple that um are very prepared, down to even having a peanut butter sandwich ready to go. And if they don't need it for that week, then they bring it hiking. Get it ready again. I mean, that's that's some serious preparedness. Right. Um, okay, well, that's about all we have for today. I want to thank you both for uh joining me in our final segment of Be Ready Vancouver um and sharing this information about emergency response to our listeners. Thank you both.

Speaker 18:03

Thanks for having us. Thank you for having us.

Speaker 3 18:05

Uh make sure to tune in to our previous two episodes of Be Ready Vancouver series. And if you want more information about Be Ready Vancouver, check out the website at cityvancouver.us/beready. If you haven't already, now is a great time to get yourselves prepared. Until next time.