Sussex County Emergency Operations Center hosts annual 9-1-1 Awareness Day

The Sussex County Emergency Operations Center, or known as EOC, hosted its 17th annual 9-1-1 awareness day.

It was a fun and information-filled day of safety demonstrations as well as educating elementary students the importance of 9-1-1.

 The Sussex County emergency Operations Center is a central command and control facility responsible for emergency preparedness.

Director Joe Thomas explains that these dispatchers work 12 hour days. They come in and they are the first person that the public deals with when there is an emergency.

From there, they take all the relative information in order to dispatch appropriate level of response.

During the summer, these dispatchers deal with about 500 calls a day and during the off-season, it ranges from 300 to 350. The dispatchers go through a 12 to 16 week training period to learn how to answer the phone calls, how to deal with the person, and if the person is distraught to teach them how to calm a person down.

Assistant Supervisor David Perrine, deals with callers everyday and he tells us some tips for those in a case of emergency. He says the main thing is to know your address and where you’re at. Perrine states that callers need the correct information in order to help them quickly and properly.