By Derek Schlennstedt
It’s a call you hope you never have to make and the decision to dial triple-zero is usually one done out of desperation for help.
Every day, thousands of Victorians make that call and on Black Saturday that number sky-rocketed to more than 10,000 and continued at high levels for several days afterwards.
Those phone calls came in from people in desperate – and sometimes fatal – situations.
It’s a day that former call taker and dispatcher at ESTA Michelle Lannen will never forget.
“As you can imagine it was a very intense day…we prepared as much as we could,” she said.
“Not knowing what was coming and I guess the calls on that day were quite different from the normal run-of-the-mill calls.
“I’ve dealt with every type of disaster, train crash, car accident, but definitely Black Saturday stands out as the most intense period of workload in my nearly 15 years of being with ESTA.”
Keeping callers composed amid the chaos of an incident is at the heart of being a triple-zero operator and while saving lives and influencing others is a regular part of their workdays, the calls that Michelle took during Black Saturday have impacted her and her colleagues.
She might be the last person that some callers were able to speak to.
“I spoke to people who passed away and talked to them through their last moment of their life,” she said.
“It has a massive toll and I wouldn’t still be here if it wasn’t for the team and heroes in ESTA that enable you to work through it.
“We’re all in this together, especially during that period as it wasn’t just one day, but we all just banded together as best we could.”
She said that as the scale of the emergency became clear, ESTA’s employee assistance program counsellors were called in to help call takers and dispatchers cope, but noted that camaraderie during the days following Black Saturday helped too.
