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| It was a sunny but cold afternoon when we arrived at ambulance control, which is part of the Police Headquarters complex at Nantycaws on the outskirts of Carmarthen. This gave Alan and Fran the chance to get out the old MGB and blow away the cobwebs! | ||
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Having parked and phoned Andrew we spent the best part of 15 minutes wandering around outside the complex trying to find the entrance and getting colder by the minute (as the sun had decided to hide for a while - note the lack of shadows in the photo on the right!). We phoned Andrew again and asked him to rescue us. He took us into the ambulance control area of the building via the front entrance - which is at the back of the building and let us warm up in the rest room area before splitting us into two groups. As the first group had a guided tour around the control room the rest of us were able to thaw out with a nice cup of tea. |
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| I think we were all surprised at how big the control room is. Altogether, there must be about 12 desks in there, each one with 2 seating positions. Also the blinds were drawn making the room quite dark as we first entered. On the left in the next photo you can see a green indicator panel high up on the wall. That indicates when a 999 call comes in, how many calls have been received that day and how many were not answered (as all the operators were already busy dealing with calls) and were therefore diverted to other control rooms in the country with spare capacity to take them. |
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Below that panel is the desk where 2 controllers are sitting taking the 999 calls. They give advice to the caller and ask a series of questions - the answers to which determine the type and severity of the call. Andrew's daughter was actually on duty that afternoon and can be seen in the next photo. |
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There are various other ambulance service personnel seated at the other desks, each with his/her special job to do. Andrew is the shift supervisor and his desk is tucked away on the right of the room. At the time of our visit there was also a doctor on duty dealing with non-urgent calls, and thereby trying to lessen the load on the service. At the back of the control room there's a small training room where new trainees receive their training (see right). Andrew was very informative and we were surprised at just how busy the place was, considering it was a Sunday afternoon. |
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After both groups
had been shown around the control room Andrew gave us all a debriefing
session in the rest room. I think we can now appreciate why our phone call
to control at the start of our cover periods is not answered straight away!
It really does help us knowing what's going on at the other end of the
phone. Pennard First responders are very grateful to Andrew and all the
staff on duty for their time and courtesy.
Before leaving the site we all lined up for a photo (Andrew took the photo).
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