Terror

To any Boston First Responder:

My heart goes out to you. Nobody should ever have to go through what happened today. Seeing people hurting, crying, missing body parts. That is such a horrific scene to have to take in. And my dispatchers, I applaud you for doing such a good job today. I heard the audio recording today of the event, and it was bone chilling. To see these images on the news is one thing. But to have to go through this entire situation blindly, without any eyes to see the magnitude of what you had to handle... I would be drained, emotionally and physically. You did so well. You rose above and beyond the call of duty, making sure that you did what you had to do in order to save lives and try and restore the peace of one of the greatest cities in America. God bless you.

When something like this happened in the past, all I could think was "poor officer, firefighter, EMT." The faces on TV, the ones physically responding to the incident, those were the people I thanked in my mind. Now, the story has changed. The thanks these groups of brave men and women are no less, but instead are shared with those in the ranks of emergency dispatching. When something like this happens, it's not just sending an ambulance for an MVA or rescue for a house fire. When a mass casualty incident occurs, especially in a place like this, there seem to be different feelings that get thrown into the mix. Patriotism. Vengeance. Sadness. Fear. Working an incident like this just makes it harder to fathom what the outcome might be, and who would have the nerve, and mental capacity, to make something like this happen. It's a shame that everyday could be your last, not always because of something you do, but because of the acts of others that cause injury and harm to completely innocent people.

With this, I yield back, for now. I'm sure as the days and weeks progress, more details will emerge that will either help the situation, or make me more sick to my stomach. And seeing that it's NTW, I can only say THANK YOU Dispatchers, in Boston and everywhere around the world. For without you, those who help would have nowhere to go, and nobody would get the help they needed.

-DH