Behind the 911 Console: Ray Hasil, Mason / Oceana Dispatch Authority

Do you have what it takes to become a 911 Dispatcher? Join us as we go Behind the Console with Ray Hasil, Executive Director of the Mason/Oceana Dispatch Authority to discuss the important work 911 Dispatchers and PSAP’s do to ensure seamless public safety communications for our first responders. For the month of April during National 911 Education Month, and for National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week April 9-15, 2023, we would like to take the opportunity to thank our Public Safety Telecommunicators for their service and dedication. #thankyou911 Transcript: https://michigan.gov/mpscs/-/media/Project/Websites/MPSCS/Social_Media/Transcripts/Tune-in-with-MPSCS-911-Ray-Hasil-Transcript-Final.pdf

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:12

Welcome to TuneIn with MPSCS. I am your host, Judy Like, and today we are very lucky to have Ray Hansel. He's the executive director of the Mason Oceana Dispatch Authority. He is our guest. We caught up with him at the Michigan Statewide Interoperable Conference in Muskega, Michigan, to talk about the important work 911 dispatchers and Peace Apps do to ensure the seamless public safety communications for our first responders. For 50 years, 911 has served as the vital link between the American public and emergency services. For the month of April during National 911 Education Month, we would like to take the opportunity to thank our public safety telecommunicators for their service and dedication. Ray, thank you for taking the time to meet with us today.

SPEAKER_01 0:55

Thank you so much for having me. It's good to be here.

SPEAKER_03 0:57

Ray, what is your title and how long have you been there?

SPEAKER_01 1:00

I am the director for Mason Oceana 911, and this is my 11th year of uh being director for that organization.

SPEAKER_03 1:10

What exactly does that jurisdiction cover?

SPEAKER_01 1:13

So Mason Oceana 911 is a two-county combined uh Peace app, what we call, uh 911 Center. So anybody that needs to call 911 within that two-county area is going to ring into our center. So we cover all of Mason and Oceana counties.

SPEAKER_03 1:32

And who exactly are your customers?

SPEAKER_01 1:34

I like to think of our customers as internal and external. Our external customers are the people that need help. They're the ones that are having an emergency or need public safety for a variety of reasons. Our internal customers, I always look at as public safety because we provide a service and I do really, I truly do look at them as customers. Um, there's a customer service way of thinking that if I can engage with those folks and make sure that we are delivering the quality of service that they expect and deserve.

SPEAKER_03 2:15

Could you tell us a little bit about yourself? Where do you live, your family?

SPEAKER_01 2:19

I live in Pentwater, Michigan. And I call myself a transplant. Around fourth grade, I started vacationing there with a good friend of mine from the Chicago area. I grew up in Oak Park River Forest area, which there are a lot of people from Oak Park that land in Pentwater for whatever reason. And over the years I found myself going there more and more and more. And one day while I was sitting in bumper to bumper traffic, you know, like a two-hour drive for 35 miles on a hot summer day with construction, and just kind of doing the math on what percentage of my life I was spending in stop and go traffic. And I knew that I loved going up to Michigan every weekend I possibly could. And I started thinking about is there a way that I could find a living up there? There, there aren't a ton of jobs in the area, especially in Pentwater. And in uh 2001, I started dating a girl from Pentwater, and that was all I needed. I took a little bit of a leap of faith. Uh, I had been working with United Parcel Service as a technology support group supervisor and uh and and walked away from that job. I was uh promptly rewarded with a couple of years of unemployment in Pentwater, just doing odd jobs here and there. And one of the things I did just for fun was join the volunteer fire department. So joining the fire department in 2001 eventually led into becoming a dispatcher, a public safety telecommunicator for Mason Oceana 911. I started that in June of 2003 as a part-time telecommunicator. I went full-time by 04. And then in 2008, the technology got really big. They were implementing in-car computers and modems and networks. There were a lot of different things that were happening that they didn't necessarily have somebody that worked on those, could work on those kind of systems. So in 2008, I was uh promoted to a new position as their uh data manager, IT administrator, uh Geek Squad is the best way I can put it. And then uh in 2013, our director Rich Fuel left for Calhoun County and I became director of Mason Oceana in February of 2013. I'm married to that same Pentwater gal that I met back in 2001. We have three daughters. They are 17, 18, and our youngest is uh is 12. My oldest daughter is in her first year at Davenport University, which is on the south side of Grand Rapids. So that's kind of my evolution and how I ended up from Chicago and landed in Pentwater, and my my journey to uh becoming director at Mason Oceana.

SPEAKER_03 5:19

Any hobbies? What do you do for fun?

SPEAKER_01 5:22

And in my spare time, um as a kid, I played drums, uh, started in grade school and high school, and then one year a marching band in college, and I started playing the drums again. And uh I really enjoyed doing that. I'm also a barbecue enthusiast. I like smoking my own um Boston butts or brisket uh ribs, so that's kind of a passion slash hobby, uh, slash obsession, and then amateur radio as well. I enjoy dialing around on the amateur radio waves too.

SPEAKER_03 6:00

Lunch at Ray's house. Uh, we're going to take a little break right now, and we will be right back.

SPEAKER_00 6:14

Here's the quick quiz to get quick help when you call 911. Should you answer all operators' questions about your emergency and location? Should you stay on the line? Should you listen to information about how to help yourself? 911 gets thousands of calls each day. Operators are trained to ask questions so the right type of help is sent to each emergency. Always answer questions and listen to instructions. Never hang up. 911 help you.

SPEAKER_02 6:44

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SPEAKER_01 7:18

Thank you so much for having me.

SPEAKER_03 7:20

Now, what qualities are required for somebody to work as a 911 dispatcher? Is there anything specific that you look for?

SPEAKER_01 7:30

Yeah, that's a great question. And a lot of folks don't truly understand the position. So we get a mixed bag of people that, like, for instance, will apply for a job there. Um, I think there's a number of qualities that are ideal. I would say uh multitasking is probably up at the top of that list. Um when people start training, they have a hard time until they start to get an ear for the radio. They start to understand uh what the officers are saying, what they mean. And as they get more experienced, when I hear that person's voice speaking, I know who that is. I don't need to look at the screen to see the name of the unit that's transmitting.

SPEAKER_03 8:19

Right.

SPEAKER_01 8:19

Over the years, public safety telecommunicators will develop what I call a superpower. Oh. They will be at their console talking on the phone to somebody while typing something in the computer, and they will hear their partners in the room and be scanning what they're saying and doing, and they'll have an awareness of what they're doing at their console as well as their partners' consoles. And it's a use it or lose it skill. It takes a year or two to develop, and then when you stop dispatching, you will eventually lose that superpower. And I lost my superpower a long time ago, but it was really cool while it lasted. So the multitasking is certainly toward the top of that list. I'd say you've got to be able to keep cool under pressure. You can't be offended easily. We're going to be uh yelled at and sworn at by people. We're going to be talking to people that are having the worst day of their life. Um, maybe you're not taking that call every day, but certainly on a very regular basis where a loved one has passed away or there's been a terrible car accident or somebody's house is on fire. So you have to have that resilience of staying calm and cool under pressure, um, being able to compose yourself in some of these very, very intense uh situations. You also have to be able to make some decisions that you may not necessarily have been trained on. There's no amount of training that we can give a public safety telecommunicator that is going to be able to give them the correct answer to every single situation that people call 911. So you have to be able to use uh some common sense and make some judgment calls at times for something that may not be defined by policies and procedures. One of the other things that uh people ask about, and we recently hired a couple of full-time folks, and I had some friends of mine, different people that I knew that said, Hey, Ray, do you think I could do you think I could do this? Would I be good at? And there are a number of times where I have no question that the person could do the job, but there's a lifestyle component to public safety and public safety telecommunicator that folks may not think about. And that's we're working weekends, we're working holidays, we're working nights. Uh, if you're a brand new hire, there's a pretty good chance that you're going to be working nights for, you know, anywhere from one to many years until you have some time in that position and can select that day shift that is uh a little more conducive to a normal lifestyle. So that's one of the things that when people ask, you know, could I do this? Yeah, I think you could do it, but I'm not sure that your lifestyle will gel very well with that every other weekend or nights or missing Christmas or Thanksgiving. And this is one of those jobs where it's a 24-7 job. There is somebody that is seated in those chairs every single minute of the year. So it's uh it's very much a lifestyle decision in addition to being able to do the job.

SPEAKER_03 11:55

And what are some of the common myths about dispatching?

SPEAKER_01 12:00

So I guess probably the the common myth that I would like to speak to the most, the top of that list is in the industry we call the telecommunicator job reclassification. And so what's happening is that right now, 911 public safety telecommunicators are classified under office and administrative support.

SPEAKER_03 12:22

Oh.

SPEAKER_01 12:23

And the myth I want to dispel is that we are not office staff, we are public safety.

SPEAKER_03 12:29

Right.

SPEAKER_01 12:30

And there's been a movement uh over the years. It you know, gains steam, and then we take a couple steps back. But this position, this this job that that public safety telecommunicators do is nothing like a regular office job. I said before, you know, many of the calls we take are from people having the worst day of their life. And um really until units arrive on scene, we're sort of in charge of that incident over the phone, best we can. Uh we're in charge of that incident until the responders actually arrive on scene and can take over for the incident. But there's been a push to reclassify 911 telecommunicators to uh protective service occupation. So that's something that I I definitely wanted to mention is that uh we are trying to dispel the myth that we just kind of sit around and wait for something to happen. Um, it's nothing like that. And I don't know that we've trained anybody that didn't say, wow, I had no idea there was so much involved in this job. So um yeah, we're gonna keep pushing to get reclassified, and uh it will be a great day when we're looked at more as public safety than office office help.

SPEAKER_03 13:56

Wow. So what emerging technologies do you see enhancing 911?

SPEAKER_01 14:05

You know, it seems like we've been talking about next-gen 911 for about a decade, and I think we have. And we're part of the way there. There are some technologies out there that are becoming mainstream now. I would say that uh we had heard about um pictures coming into 911. That is already here. Um, texting to 911 was even before that. I'd say text to 911 is probably the first NG 911 type technology that came online. And I think in Michigan we're almost 100%, we're areas that you can send a text message to 911. So that's usually somebody that is hearing impaired or somebody that's in a dangerous situation where they can't speak on the phone out of fear for a variety of reasons. But uh the photography, the still pictures, that's already available in our center. It's already available in a lot of centers. I would say over the last 12 months, the ability for video, for live video capture is available. Now, that's a really interesting one because there are a number of uh questions about bringing video into 911. And I don't think there's any doubt that that can be useful in certain situations. But the questions that need to be addressed are policy. Um how are we going to use video? What are the liabilities we need to be concerned with? What's the impact of bringing live video of something horrible into the dispatch floor for the personnel that are used to hearing these things, and that's okay, but now they're going to see those things as well. So some of these technologies I think will be mainstream sooner than later. I think that the video, there are a lot of people just kind of watching how that starts to evolve before they move on it because there are so many questions about it. And it may seem like a slam dunk, like, yeah, bring bring it into the center. Why wouldn't you want to have that? Well, not everybody is ready to see that stuff. So the folks that supply video will say, Well, we can we can have it so those certain things are blurred out or blocked out. Okay, so I have a live video that comes in and something is blocked out because we don't want to traumatize the dispatchers, but then whatever was blurred out ends up being something terrible that we really would have liked to have known. So these are just some of the different questions that are swirling out there. Um, there's been some successes with video. Um, I've heard about um one that comes to mind is that there was CPR being performed on a patient, and they could see from the video, the 911 telecommunicator could see that the chest compressions were being done ineffectively. So they were able to see that and coach the person that was doing the compressions to do them differently so that they were more effective as far as CPR.

SPEAKER_03 17:27

Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_01 17:28

So that's just one instance of you know how a live video feed can benefit, um, can benefit the outcome of a situation. One of the other cool things that is starting to become mainstream is called telematics. So there is a bad accident that happens and um the the driver is rendered unconscious. Telematics will automatically detect that there's been a collision. It automatically connects to a 911 center and starts feeding information to 911 based on the sensors throughout the vehicle. Things like, all right, we think there's one patient because one seatbelt was engaged in the vehicle. It was a very high-speed impact on the broad side of the car. So we know that that's going to be a particularly traumatic type injury. Airbags were deployed on the driver's side. This is all advanced information that is starting to flow into the 911 centers to give the responders a better picture of what they'll be rolling into when they're called to respond to these types of incidents. Another new NG 911 type technology, the newest iPhones have uh collision detection where they're automatically calling a 911 center if you don't stop it from calling. But along with these cool new technology advances, comes bumps in the road. So I know that here in Michigan, we have been getting 911 calls for people that were that were skiing, downhill skiing, and probably fell. The phone took it as a collision or a fall of some kind and automatically dialed 911. So along with these cool advances come these little things that we just have to work out. And that's part of the reason we don't just dive headfirst and into some of these next gen technologies. And on the iPhone, something else that's cool that it's brand new, is that if you're an area with no cellular coverage, you will be able to contact the 911 center through satellite. And it's very new. So those are some of the you know new technologies that are starting to become mainstream. A lot of the body worn stuff, like smartwatches, and there's a whole list of other body worn gadgets that can you know give advanced notice if you're having a heart attack or your pulse rate is high. I think the new Apple Watch will tell you your, I think it has a pulse oximeter, so it tells you the percentage of oxygen in your blood. So these are cool medical things that are starting to happen with our body worn devices. And some of these things play right into the whole next generation 911 type technology.

SPEAKER_03 20:19

So, Ray, how has the MPSCS supported you and the Mason Oceana 911 system?

SPEAKER_01 20:25

So Mason Oceana 911 was actually one of the very early adopters of 800 megahertz and the statewide system here in Michigan. In 2003, we went live in a brand new 911 center. And at that time, law enforcement was pretty much on 800, the state system, um, but fire and EMS really were not. So when they built that facility and went live with it, that was the point at which everything fire, law, EMS, all of those, all three of those disciplines went 100% onto 800, the statewide system. So over the years, um we have interacted a lot with MPSCS, everything from um system maintenance that they handle to emergency plans, um, console programming, uh, radio programming. It goes it goes on and on and on about all the different services that MPSCS provides and really the cost effectiveness that the cost to be on a system like that would never be affordable by Mason or Oceania County if we were to do it on our own. It's not possible. These are extreme extremely technical and expensive systems with tower and infrastructure maintenance, and um it would it's quite an advanced system. For the rural area that that we're in. So there's a lot that MPSCS does and and support of making a very, very affordable radio system to pretty much all agencies in Michigan.

SPEAKER_03 22:16

Okay. Now what are some of your favorite memories of the MPSCS?

SPEAKER_01 22:22

It would be hard to pinpoint just one, but what I'll say about MPSCS is that I've worked with a lot of people at MPSCS over the years, and it has always been a good experience. MPSCS is full of people that are resourceful, helpful, and willing to accommodate any reasonable request. So I've I've worked from everybody all the way at the top, from Brad Stoddard on down. If I can mention some of the names, Kate Janrith, Todd Velderman, Jeff Kelly, Jerry Nummer, Randy Williams, Dennis Fountain. Dennis is in charge for of maintenance in our neck of the woods on the west side. And I engage with Dennis all the time. Janelle Whitman, Tara McLeod, people that are helping with things like this conference that we're attending right now. Or um Tara, for instance, is on all of our commute calls taking notes for us. It's just a wonderful asset to have to be able to help us out with some of the stuff that we work on together. Dave Barnett, Lanny at the NCC. I don't even know Lanny's last name, but I've talked to him dozens of times at the NCC. Rich Melbourne, there's some folks that are no longer there, Mark Sandberg, Theron Cheneau. And then I I did want to mention uh Dave Hayhurst, who um who was the NCC manager for a couple decades and passed away from cancer. So those are some of the folks that I've worked with extensively at MPSAS over the years. And I would say that my positive memory is just all the different projects that I've worked on with all those different folks.

SPEAKER_03 24:16

Excellent. Uh, thank you so much for being here today to talk about 911 dispatching.

SPEAKER_01 24:22

Well, I certainly enjoyed uh enjoyed being able to talk a little bit about the the industry that uh that I'm in. And uh thank you for taking the time to learn some more about it.

SPEAKER_03 24:34

We hope you've all enjoyed the show, and we will be back soon. If you've been listening to Tune In with MPSTS, be sure to look us up at www.michigan.gov slash mpsts, YouTube, sound, and on Twitter at MPSTS. You can also subscribe to our podcast on iTunes and Google Podcasts so you never miss an episode. See you the next time. Thank you.