Even though Amanda Willinsky was sitting in the Raleigh-Wake 911 Center, she felt as if she was right in the thick of things in western North Carolina.
“It was hard. It was very upsetting,” said Willinsky. “Every single call was heartbreaking.”
On Friday, Sept. 27, our 911 Center helped take calls for Buncombe County and surrounding communities. Telecommunicators here would then get information back to their counterparts in the mountains.
Willinsky said when the first call came in they didn’t realize the gravity of the situation. Then came call after call after call. In a matter of three hours, they handled more than 1500 calls, the majority of them from the western part of our state.
“One of my first calls was a man who said his friend had run back into the house to get his dog. He was crying as he told me he saw the house collapse and start floating down the river. His friend was still inside,” explained Willinsky.
As an experienced telecommunicator, Willinsky pointed out they are trained to stay focused and not let emotions play a part in handling 911 calls. This day was different.
“There was a feeling helplessness,” she said. “You knew in your gut many of these people wouldn’t be getting the help they needed due to the sheer severity of the storm.”
Through tears, Willinsky told us the emotions of that day comes back to her in waves. She’s been talking with her father, a former police officer, about what she went through that morning, and she’s taken advantage of visits with the Raleigh Police Department’s therapy dog, Teddy.
Willinsky said she hopes she made a difference to at least one person that day.
“It was nice to know we could be there for them. I think the biggest thing we tried to do was give them hope to keep fighting and survive.”
