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Ten Calgarians will enter the world of first responders after graduating from the city’s emergency communications program Friday.
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“It’s a very exciting day for us,” Sue Henry, chief of the city’s emergency management department and Calgary 9-1-1, told Postmedia, adding that the new entrants will supply the city’s team with “incredible horsepower” to answer calls and “keep citizens and front-line responders safe.”
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Henry said the city has been under “a lot of staffing pressure” as the world emerges from the pandemic, and that the new staffers will strengthen the team by more than two people per shift, which “makes a massive difference when Calgarians are calling for assistance.”
New grad Travis Johnson was introduced to the program by his family and friends, themselves first responders. Johnson, driven by the need to help people, learned about coding, mapping to spot callers’ locations and countering biases with active listening.
Johnson said one of the main challenges of being a first responder is addressing someone’s crisis. “It’s very intense,” he said. “There’s a lot of adrenalin when you take some of these high-pressure calls.”
But he added the city’s program helped him acclimatize to the nature of such calls through simulations. One way to handle such situations is to detach yourself from the caller’s circumstances while realizing you’re there to help them navigate through their predicament, Johnson said.
“This person’s here relying on me, and I’m not in that situation myself, even as stressful as my call is,” he said.
Johnson emphasized the importance of first responders, saying a simple acknowledgment can go a long way.
“We just want to be recognized for the things we do because we’re the first of first responders,” he said.
“And I think, you know, people realize that, but sometimes it kind of gets lost behind the scenes.”
— With files from Darren Makowichuk
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