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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Extremely accurate portrayal of 911 dispatchers, October 17, 2006
This review is from: Answering 911: Life in the Hot Seat (Hardcover)
Having worked as a 911 dispatcher, I cannot say enough good things about Ms. Burau's book. It is difficult to put into words what the job is like, the sorts of feelings and experiences dispatchers get, and Ms. Burau does an amazing job of explaining it. I found myself nodding in agreement (or laughing out loud,) seeing my own experiences in the events she narrates.
By no means is her account a whitewash or festival of warm fuzzies; some of the events she describes (and her and other dispatchers' reactions to those events) may be shocking or disturbing to those who haven't been there. This doesn't make those events or reactions any less real, or any less common in other police departments or dispatch centers.
Dispatchers are sometimes overlooked in the organization of police departments; many people assume the person they speak to on the other end of 911 is a police officer. Ms. Burau does an exceedingly good job of opening up this sub-society. Highly recommended, both for laypersons outside the field who want to understand what it's like in a 911 comm center, and for dispatchers who want a mostly humorous, sympathetic look at what we choose to do for a living. This is the best written account of 911 dispatching I've read.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Life on the other end of the 911 phone call..., December 29, 2007
This review is from: Answering 911: Life in the Hot Seat (Hardcover)
This was one of those "staff picks" at the library that catches your eye as you're trying to check out the books you *did* come in for... Answering 911: Life in the Hot Seat by Caroline Burau. Since it was relatively short and had a sufficiently quirky premise, I picked it up. It turned out to be one of the more entertaining reads I had this year.
Contents:
What It's Like; Destiny, or Something; On-the-Job Training; Joe Wilson; Power Phones; Lily; Good Neighbors; Friends in High Places; Anniversary; Jurisdiction; My Marsha; Kristen; Coppers; Hostages; Smucked; On the Night Shift; That Loving Feeling; Just Too Silly; changes; Words; On Burnout; The Parenting Option; On Wannabes; DOA; The Job; Retirement; Wherever You Go; Full Circle; Acknowledgements
Burau has led a far different life than most of us... She was somewhat of an outsider growing up, and ended up getting hooked on crack. This addiction, fed by her boyfriend, culminated with her doing a few days in a Florida jail when she was busted for "loitering", just moments before they were supposed to be picking up some product. She took a hard look at what she had become, and ended up going back home to start over. Her nursing career ended in college when she would get queasy over blood. Her career as a reporter wasn't working out much better. One day while following a story at the police station, she was encouraged to apply for a job as a 911 operator. Surprisingly, her drug background didn't discourage the interviewers, and she started a new life on the desk of a small-town emergency response agency. She's a great writer, so you quickly get sucked into her struggles to learn the lingo, the multiple terminals and switchboards, and the processes that are necessary to make sure the right people are sent out to the right incidents. She also shares the pain of having someone die on the other end of the line, and the agony of trying to know if you were the cause of it. She also ends up knowing far more about her neighbors than she wished she knew, and soon everyone she sees has some sort of background story that she can't just pretend didn't happen.
Other than the sheer entertainment factor of the book, it also made me think about those people who are on the other end of the phone line when we dial 911. We don't have a clue as to the stress and pressure they're under, and how each day exposes them to more ugliness and insanity than most of us experience in a lifetime. You almost want to dial 911 and just say "thanks for being there", except that they have other more important calls to take. :)
Well written, funny, and interesting... Definitely worth a read.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Very Unvarnished View, August 2, 2008
This review is from: Answering 911: Life in the Hot Seat (Hardcover)
I've worked for 9-1-1 since 1986 and have been in the same center since 1991 and must say this book surprised me with it's completely unvarnished look at the career of 9-1-1 dispatching. The prose is good, the content accurate, and the people genuine. If you want to know about working for 9-1-1 this book has it right.
I've read the other reviews on here and to those who gave the book 3 stars I want to point out -
1. Yes, the author does spend a lot of time on the non-emergency calls. This is an honest look at our workload and I applaud the author for not adopting a Rescue 9-1-1 type mentality where only the exciting or sexy calls make the final cut. To really get the feel for our profession you need to hear about it all or you will never understand why we ask all the frustrating questions we do when you just want us to "just get them here!"
2. Former drug addict in our line of work? This surprised me too. Where I work we are unable to hire people who have felony level crimes in the criminal history background. However, standards differ throughout the country and there are some areas where turn-over is quite high. High enough that employers are willing to accept applications from those that others wouldn't. Having said that, the author is the genuine article and regardless of her background, she's doing the job the way the rest of us do it.
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