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Telecommunicators Raise Awareness on 9-1-1
Local telecommunicators are raising awareness on the emergency service they provide in recognition of an important month for their profession.

April is National 9-1-1 Education Month, and Saturday marks the end to National Public Safety Telecommunicators week.

Amanda Jennings is a dispatcher at Galesburg's Public Safety Building. She tells the WGIL Morning News her job is to take control of any emergency situation and tell the callers to remain calm.

"We're trying to bring you back down to a level where we can gain the information that we need," Jennings said. "We might as you to take a deep breath, and ask you certain questions that we need to get a faster response, and then we can go through other details later."

"But we're trying to get the most important details first."

Jennings says the most important detail to those phone calls is the location of the emergency. She says that with most people transitioning to mobile phones, it's become more time consuming to track the location of a call.

Jennings reminds people it's illegal to issue a prank call by dialing 9-1-1. She also discourages parents from letting infants handle any phones, in service or out of service, because they could still connect to telecommunicators if 9-1-1 is punched in.
04 13 12 by Newsroom
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