Asheville, North Carolina, public safety telecommunicators faced the harrowing wrath of Hurricane Helene.
As a public safety telecommunicator in Buncombe County, North Carolina, for more than eight years, I have experienced many critical incidents. But nothing could have prepared me for the catastrophe that the city of Asheville experienced during Hurricane Helene.
On a Friday morning, we left our families behind and headed to work amid a raging storm. None of us had any idea what this storm had in store. As the rain intensified, calls flooded in. The wind downed power lines and trees, leading to blocked roads and damage to buildings, as mandatory evacuations were issued to different areas of our city. Calls that began as an escort escalated to swift-water rescues. Many of us took those calls and sometimes heard callers pleading for help just before the water or landslide took them away.
We endured 12 hours of continuous traumatic calls and radio traffic, which amounted to about 2,000 calls in that time and more than 5,000 in two days. When I say 12 hours of nonstop calls, take a moment to reflect. How many calls were received each hour? The phone never stopped ringing. We couldn’t catch our breath before another critical incident call came in. Our emergency communications center (ECC) received so many 9-1-1 calls that they overflowed to several other ECCs. We are thankful for all the assistance, including the days following the disaster, when many Telecommunicator Emergency Response Taskforce (TERT) members came to our rescue to help with the workload.
Witnessing my colleagues give their all during this disaster was both inspiring and heart wrenching. The telecommunicators that worked each day must have supernatural powers. To me, all of them are heroes. They are heroes capable of managing chaos by providing a calm voice on the other side of the telephone line. We were the golden bridge connecting our callers with the first responders. Without the ability to handle all these calls and to dispatch units, many more lives would have been lost. It was an honor to witness everyone give 100% during this catastrophic incident.
And yet, the hurricane’s impact weighed heavily on all of us. My heart hurt to see our own suffering from the impact of this hurricane. When we ended our shift, we were in shock and disbelief. The reality of the rising rivers was painfully evident in every call we received. As telecommunicators, we often envision worse-case scenarios, but we couldn’t have imagined the true scale of the devastation that swept through the city. We held to the hope that our first responders would find more survivors.
On Saturday our whole city was left without power, water, Wi-Fi or cellphone service. Many of our first responders continued to do search and rescues. Our collective blood pressure was like a rollercoaster ride the whole day as the phones continued to ring nonstop. This time, thousands of families were looking for loved ones. Each time our officers found someone alive, we held our breaths and prayed for the person to be rescued in time. There was a sense of relief once the person was brought to safety. Any time an officer located a deceased victim, our hearts sank because we immediately wondered if it could be one of the people we talked to.
There was one 9-1-1 text that left an impact on my life. During the storm, a pregnant woman was giving birth to a breached baby. The road leading to the family’s home was washed away and the only way to rescue them was by helicopter. I went home that day, hoping our responders would reach them in time. To my surprise and relief, the family was rescued, and a healthy baby girl was born. I hope that one day, God blesses me with meeting this baby girl who brought hope during a hurricane.
As the days passed, we continued to show up to perform our duty even as we faced the cruel reality that the death toll continued to rise. The long shifts began to take a toll on us physically and mentally. Just when we thought that we couldn’t go any longer, help arrived. The TERT teams from all over the U.S. delivered some much-needed relief to our center. My heart was filled with joy to see all of the amazing telecommunicators willing to lend us a helping hand.
This experience transformed our understanding of resilience and community, reminding us of our critical role in crises and the role of therapists, police officers, firefighters, forensics specialists and all our sister agencies that helped us get through. Please pray for these telecommunicators to find peace in their hearts and minds.
Amayrani Padilla Cortes is Shift Supervisor, Communications Training Officer and peer support member for Buncombe County (North Carolina) Public Safety Communications. Cortes holds a bachelor’s degree in business law and administration.
