In a small, dark room, the glow of four computer screens on her face, Kathy Pugh was poised to respond to any emergency call placed in Coles County.

Pugh, of Toledo, is an emergency dispatcher with the Coles County Emergency Communications Center.

The Coles County Emergency Communications Center is the emergency-response center for all of Coles County, covering a population of more than 53,000 people, said center Director Bernie Buttram.

The center has two locations. The main center is located at 10500 State Hwy 16 in Mattoon, and a backup center is located in the Mattoon Police Department, 1710 Wabash Ave.

Pugh has worked for the main center for eight years and worked in the Cumberland County dispatch center for seven years before then. She is one of 20 full-time employees who work for both centers.

As she sat at her desk, clicking through numerous windows and analyzing data across all fours computer screens, Pugh monitored the locations of police officers and input data coming over the radio.

Buttram explained that both centers maintain a total staff of at least three dispatchers every hour and day of the year.

“We don’t know what a holiday is; we don’t know what daylight and darkness is. We are open 24/7, 365 days,” Buttram said.

Both centers respond to calls for all county emergency departments.

“We dispatch all police, fire, ambulances, volunteer fire departments, the coroner, probation—any type of emergency response comes out of this building for the whole county,” Buttram said.

Both centers also respond to emergency and non-emergency calls to the Mattoon, Charleston and Eastern police departments, as well as the Coles County Sheriff’s Office. Non-emergency calls can include people needing to speak with a police officer or requesting information.

Amanda Williamson, assistant director of the Coles County Emergency Communications Center, explained that when a student calls for an Eastern campus police officer or activates one of the 21 emergency phones on campus, students speak with a dispatcher from the center.

“You think that you are calling the campus police,” she said. “You are not; you are calling out here, and we are sending the campus police to you.” 

Several voices cracking over the radio, Pugh typed data into her computer system while speaking with police officers requesting information over the radio. 

Large maps of Coles County and area towns loomed over her shoulder, painted in various colors and fine details to act as visual guides for dispatchers.

The main center also responds to and locates all emergency calls made from cell phones in Coles, Shelby and Moultrie counties.

In April 2011, the main center was updated with a system that can locate any call made from a cell phone in all three counties. 

“Your signal goes off a tower, and then the tower gives us the longitude and latitude of where that call is coming from,” Buttram said. “We can pinpoint you down to within 40 yards of where you are at.”

Before the new system, the center could only locate the closest cell phone tower to a caller. However, Buttram said the old system was inadequate for the growing number of emergency cell-phone calls.

“Well, you might be two miles from a cell phone tower,” he said.

The new system is called Phase 2 and costs the Coles County Emergency Communications Center $750,000, Buttram said.

Buttram said the cost of the new system was a large amount, seeing as the county does not fund the centers.

Rather, both centers are funded through local taxes.

All residents of Coles County who own a landline phone pay a monthly tax of $1.95 to fund the centers. As well, residents of Coles, Shelby and Moultrie counties who own a cell phone pay a monthly tax of 53 cents.

The center also charges fees to the Mattoon, Charleston and Eastern police departments, as well as the Coles County Sheriff’s Office for taking non-emergency calls.

At Pugh’s left elbow, a large phone with more than 30 buttons rang. 

As she picked it up, all she heard was shuffling. After hanging up and making a call back to the number to verify there was no emergency, she hung up with a sigh. Pocket dial.

The job of emergency dispatcher never gets boring, Pugh said.

“It’s not boring, because you get something different every day,” she said. “There’s always some twist thrown in that is different.”

Buttram said many people have misconceptions about what emergency dispatchers do.

“You see a lot of crap on television, and let me tell you something: These dispatchers in here might get a call about a minor fender bender. The next minute, there might be a 12-car pileup out here on I-57 with four dead bodies,” he said. “These people deal with this on a daily basis. It’s amazing.”

Buttram recalled one emergency dispatcher who took an emergency call involving her son in a car accident. The son did not survive.

Pugh said the stresses of the job can be great, but it is her job to put all stress aside and provide callers with the necessary assistance and to keep the caller calm.

“You have to learn to disassociate with it,” she said. “At some points, we have dispatchers who handle calls with their own families, and you would never know they took the call.”

Pugh said while dispatchers cannot let the stresses of their job affect their performance during work, the strains of the job often hit a dispatcher after they have left the center.

“When you walk out the door, that’s when you go, “Man, that was bad,” she said.

Tim Deters can be reached

at 581-2812 or tadeters@eiu.edu.