Over the last decade, Carbon County has seen a nearly 246 percent increase in the number of overdose calls coming through the communications center.

On Thursday, the commissioners and Gary Williams, director of the communications center, spoke about the increase in call volumes and emergencies that occurred in the county last year.Commissioners’ Chairman Wayne Nothstein said that in 2015, dispatchers handled a total of 150,347 calls and of that amount 712 were for drug overdoses.He pointed out that in 2006, EMS handled a total of 206 calls, but today, they are handling 500 cases annually; while police went from 95 calls in 2007, the first year data was recorded for police calls, to 212 last year.“This shows the seriousness of the problem here in Carbon County,” Nothstein said, adding that the number of cases for overdoses doesn’t take into account calls that came in as an unconscious person, code blue, suicide, mental problem or unknown issue.Williams said the staff is experiencing a lot of growing trends at the center and handling emergencies that used to be a rarity.“When stuff does happen, we are seeing that it is more severe,” he said. The total number of incidents that police, fire and EMS handled in 2015 was 81,112, an increase of 5,476 from 2014. “We are seeing more overdoses. When accidents happen, we’re seeing more people trapped in vehicles. We’re seeing that when police go to the scene there are weapons involved.“A lot of times we do status checks on the officers every 5 minutes and are looking to do the same thing with EMS personnel as well,” he said.Nothstein commended Williams and his staff of 11 full-time and seven part-time dispatchers, as well as two trainees for their dedication and professionalism to the job.“Sometimes it gets awful stressful up there,” he said. “(Wednesday) night was a prime example of how things could go from nothing to 100 mph in a hurry with the storms that we had. A lot of road closures, trees down, washouts, flooded areas, basements flooded, wires down and other problems.”Williams said that Wednesday was just one incident that proved how valuable his staff is at the center.“We can’t control Mother Nature. We ran out of ambulances (with the storms),” he said. “Thankfully municipalities help each other out. Fire departments go into other towns, Grist Mill Road was flooded and it wiped half the road away. Power outages occurred. And that was just in one eight-hour shift, maybe two shifts until it all settled down.“We can’t really operate on two dispatchers,” Williams said, adding that the trend of increasing calls demands additional dispatchers.“We go from 7 to about 11 a.m. with maybe two, but from 11 a.m. on you’re looking at three or four dispatchers on shift.”Commissioner Thomas J. Gerhard said that what Williams and the dispatchers do is a job that many times is unappreciated by the public and thanked them for doing what they do.