EL PASO, Texas (KTSM) — The 911 dispatch center opened its doors to media outlets Wednesday afternoon, Feb. 7 to see how they operate.

KTSM was given a tour of the 911 dispatch center located in Northeast El Paso, our crew got to see just how the center is split into multiple entities.

Those sections include fire, police, sheriffs, and animal control departments, non-emergency and emergency health situations.

El Paso Fire Department Public Information Officer Enrique Duenas said, “Whenever you make a phone call, we have a call taker so they will start a call. They will start writing down all the information, typing it, and then they start, the system starts moving the call to one of the dispatch islands, so to say, stations.”

The question that KTSM has gotten from viewers is “Are there enough people to answer emergency calls?”

“We work what we call minimum staffing. So, that means that we have the enough, the necessary numbers to run the center to respond to emergencies. Of course, that adapts depending on what they say, the time of the day. Sometimes we need more people, sometimes we don’t need as many,” Duenas said.

Duenas said calls are answered right away even if there is a spike, meaning that if there’s a crash and 20 people call 911, that then can create a hold on other emergency calls.

“It will be extremely rare to be three minutes on hold… usually will go faster than that. Usually it’s a few seconds, less than a minute. It takes longer for the call to actually connect than to the time that people are actually responding,” Duenas said.

He also advised callers to never hang up, although if they do they will be called back to ensure ones safety.

Duenas even shared how there is an option for people to text 911 during an emergency.

“This is usually designed for several instances where somebody cannot speak on the phone. Let’s say there’s somebody maybe who’s deaf or hard of hearing. So, they have trouble communicating over their phone, so that way they can communicate via text. Then we have some instances, for example, where it’s dangerous for somebody to speak. You just go to your text app and type 911 the same as a phone call and you start typing your emergency,” Duenas said.

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