CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- This week is National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week. They're often called the "behind the scenes heroes" of first responders and the dispatchers with Mecklenburg EMS handled more than 160,000 calls last year.
- David Gerig, the Communications Assistant Supervisor with Mecklenburg EMS, says his team took calls in more than 30 languages
- Mecklenburg EMS has a translator system they work with that immediately pulls in a language expert to help the caller get the help they need
- Mecklenburg EMS says they're seeing more calls in Russian and Vietnamese as communities in Charlotte continue to grow
David Gerig, the Communications Assistant Supervisor with Mecklenburg EMS, says his team took calls in more than 30 languages.
"Probably for me the oddest one was Swahili. But the biggest ones in this area are obviously Spanish, Nepali, Vietnamese, Burmese, Russian," Gerig says.
Mecklenburg EMS has a translator system they work with that immediately pulls in a language expert to help the caller get the help they need.
"It pulls up the translation service and transfers everybody on a conference call so that we can have the interpreting service get the language we need, or help us find the language we need,"says Gerig.
Mecklenburg EMS says they're seeing more calls in Russian and Vietnamese as communities in Charlotte continue to grow.