The Triple-0 call takers helping Victorians through their darkest hours
Talking someone through a trauma, sending help in times of distress or giving CPR instructions over the phone – these Triple-0 operators say it is a privilege to be on the other end of the line during what could be someone’s darkest day.
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Location, location, location.
It is the first thing any triple-0 call taker needs to know.
“We can’t see where you’re calling from like in Hollywood movies,” police call taker Alex Chivers says.
“We really need to know where you are. If everything else goes wrong and we get disconnected but we know where you are, we can get someone to you.”
These Emergency Services Telecommunications Authority call takers are the faceless voices on the other end of the line when Victorians call for help.
Chivers has been in the job for five years and fire dispatcher Carla Henriksen double that.
Ambulance call taker Nicholas Buruma started just 18 months ago after travelling, a job in outdoor education and a stint in traffic control.
“You’ll find at ESTA a lot of people come from very different backgrounds,” Buruma says. “But I think you’ll find across the board, everyone has very good communication skills. We can’t physically be there so the ability to keep people calm in a very stressful situation is probably the key thing.”
We joined ESTA’s call takers at work one day in summer, when temperatures in Melbourne were soaring past 43C and smoke blanketed the sky.
It sparked a flurry of ambulance calls.
● 1.02pm: An elderly woman is dehydrated and distressed while supermarket shopping. “The heat has knocked her,” the caller explains, adding the patient has previously suffered a heart attack.
● 1.06pm: A grandson calls from interstate to report that his grandmother is “going downhill” after blood poisoning.
● 1.19pm: A tourist at Brighton Beach is fading in and out of consciousness after overheating in the sun.
● 1.31pm: A 69-year-old woman has heart pain, “a niggly feeling” but her usual tablet hasn’t helped.
As Buruma assures her she did the right thing by dialling triple-0 — “always worth a call” — a colleague at a nearby desk recites the steps of CPR.
“One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. Two breaths right now. Keep pumping that chest,” the colleague says.
ESTA’s call centre in Burwood East is surprisingly quiet given the number of calls flooding in and the chorus of questions being asked. “What is your location? Is she awake? Tell me exactly what happened.”
Call takers for each of the emergency services — police, fire and ambulance — are clustered together with about 70-80 staff rostered on for each 12-hour shift.
On this particular day, they field 4595 calls between 6am and 6pm.
Among those, 133 report assaults, 183 call in car crashes, there are 121 drug incidents, 25 heart attacks, 95 robberies or thefts and 44 seizures.
One call came from Home of Beauty dog salon in Moonee Ponds, where worker Kirstie Loughton had collapsed with dangerously low blood sugar levels and colleague Louise Grogan was put through to Buruma.
The trio recently reunited, with Grogan, Loughton and her partner, Mark Stevens, keen to pass on their thanks.
“We can’t thank them enough,” Stevens says. “They really know what they are doing and handled the situation perfectly. They’ve got a big job.”
On the opposite side of the call centre to Buruma, Chivers answers the phone every few minutes.
A truck has brought down powerlines, a barking dog has been tied up in the heat outside a supermarket and two boys are riding a go-kart on a dangerously busy street.
At 2.28pm, an off-duty officer calls to report a banged-up black Holden Commodore that appears to have “a lot of blood on it”.
“I’m pretty confident it was blood,” the officer says, wondering whether there has been any reports of a hit and run nearby.
At 2.54pm, a terrified caller reports a man he once knew has discovered where he lives, smashing his car windows and was loudly making threats outside.
The two met in prison, the caller says. “He assaulted me in jail.”
Among the brutal and bizarre calls — people demanding to speak to US President Donald Trump or reporting a baby bird toppling out of a tree — there are ones that stick with the call takers.
For Chivers, it is the suicide attempts and for Buruma it is talking callers through CPR, particularly when it is a young person who has stopped breathing.
But for Henriksen it is the “little old lady” whose husband died suddenly.
She was on the line for 16 minutes until the ambulance arrived at their rural home.
“It wasn’t traumatic in any way,” she says. “She wasn’t screaming and only started crying when the ambulance got there.
“You’re not human if you don’t get affected by the sorts of stuff that we are exposed to … but it is funny how you think the ones that won’t upset you, do. And something that you kind of think should upset you doesn’t that much. Sometimes you can’t even explain why.”
Henriksen and Chivers say it is important for call takers to keep their composure and to compartmentalise the traumatic calls.
They say it is a “privilege” to be on the other end of the line during what could be someone’s darkest day.
“It’s not about the thanks but sometimes you can tell how grateful they are just by their voice,” Chivers says.
“That’s when I feel like I have helped. It’s not just the fact that I sent a fire truck when their house was burning down, but I feel as though I helped them and did something to contribute.
“It might be the worst day of their life and to make that a little easier, that’s what it’s all about.”
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