Close to Home

Mike Dougherty pictured with his wife, Amy and his two boys, Keagan, 11, and Brenden, 8.

For the last 25 years, 18 of which I personally have been witness to, PowerPhone has championed a few basic tenets for effective emergency dispatch. Essentially that a properly trained and equipped (protocols!) emergency dispatcher can:

• Render aid prior to the arrival of responders
• Properly allocate and prioritize resources
• Preserve evidence
• Reduce agency liability exposure
• Enhance scene safety and better protect responders

As a cop’s kid and someone who had grown up around public safety, I have to admit I’ve always been acutely aware of that last precept – protecting responders. It’s something I’ve always been cognizant of, and after 9/11, became firmly ingrained in me. It’s one of the primary reasons we introduced Protecting Law Enforcement Responders, one of the most popular PowerPhone courses ever released. If we can empower our students to help just one more officer return home safely, than we have all done our jobs.

That said, despite employing dozens of public safety professionals across the U.S., we’ve been very fortunate to have never experienced firsthand what many families across this country unfortunately live on a daily basis. The Call. The call from a stranger telling you a loved one has been injured or worse…

The Call came to PowerPhone recently and it has recommitted our entire organization to making sure we do our part to best protect those who spend their lives protecting us.

Pontiac, Michigan Firefighter and Paramedic Michael Dougherty has been a PowerPhone trainer for three years. He has traveled the country providing emergency medical and fire service dispatch training to agencies of all shapes and sizes. “Passion for his job” is the phrase most often echoed on his course evaluations and Mike always had a true calling for teaching emergency communications.

On January 2, 2010, Mike was working an active structure fire when a stairwell collapsed. Mike fell approximately 20 feet, landing on his head and breaking his neck. Later that day, I received The Call from our director of training, advising me that Mike had been seriously injured on the job. We didn’t have any more information, but as he was scheduled to be teaching for us on Monday we had to get the word out to the host and attending agencies.

 While administrative wheels turned, we did our best to find out what we could about Mike’s condition. I now have a more intimate understanding of “time standing still” as we reached out to his colleagues for an update. Fortunately, despite breaking his C5 vertebrate, Mike survived the fall and did not appear to have any associated paralysis. While the road to recovery is no doubt long, Mike is home and thankful to be back with his wife and young sons. The alternative is something we choose not to contemplate.

Mike’s injury was an accident, and no amount of foresight, training, prayer or luck will ever prevent additional accidents from occurring in the future. However, being witness to how quickly lives can change has caused a recommitment and rededication internally to ensuring PowerPhone continues to do our small part to best ensure all members of the public safety community make it home safely. Thank you for your service.

If you’d like to read more about Mike’s Miracle please follow this link. Also if you are local to the Pontiac, MI area, there will be a benefit in his honor on February 12. More details here.

 About the author:
Chris Salafia is the President and CEO of PowerPhone. Founded in 1984, the company has trained more than 150,000 public safety professionals representing all 50 U.S. states and more than a dozen foreign countries. The maker of Total Response® Computer Aided Call Handling (CACH) software, PowerPhone is the driving force behind One Number…One Protocol™, the initiative to bring greater consistency and simplicity to public safety call-handling. Mr. Salafia can be reached via e-mail or 203.245.8911.

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