This week is National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week, an effort to highlight the work done by dispatchers at different emergency agencies.

Sheriff Mike Blakely helped put together a lunch Tuesday at the Limestone County Sheriff’s Office in honor of all public safety communicators throughout the county. Dispatchers for LCSO, Athens Police Department, Athens-Limestone County 911 and other agencies were invited to attend in appreciation of their ongoing efforts to help residents in emergency situations.

“They are the first line of defense,” Limestone County Commission Chairman Collin Daly said. “They diffuse so many situations right off the start. When you call (911), they are the ones who keep you calm, and it’s amazing how they can do that job. It takes a special person to do it, and there’s no telling how many lives they have saved just by keeping people calm.”

Daly said people don’t realize just how important and vital a role that public safety telecommunicators fill for the community. He referred to them as “heroes in headsets.”

Daly honored the public safety telecommunicators during the April 5 commission meeting and signed a proclamation recognizing this week as National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week.

“We here at the sheriff’s office and people in the community are so thankful for their work,” Blakely said. “Any time you call, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, you are going to get a live person answering that telephone, and I’m sure that’s a relief to the community when they call in instead of getting one of those 5-minute tutorials where you press 0. It diffuses a lot of situations and gives comfort to people.”

LCSO Communications Supervisor Lt. Tammy Waddell, a former dispatcher herself, said it is “very pleasurable” to work with the fellow public safety telecommunicators in the county.

“I cannot tell you how important it is, the job they do,” she said. “We appreciate them. Those people that have stuck with it and do the job that they do, I cannot say ‘thank you’ enough.”