Suzanne Stewart
Staff Writer
There are times when something pivotal happens in a person’s life that sets them on the path to what they were always meant to do.
For Pocahontas County 911 and Emergency Management Director Ben Brown, that moment occurred when he was a senior in high school in Summersville.
Brown said he never really thought about going into emergency services, but always admired and appreciated what firemen, EMTs and law enforcement did for their communities.
He recalled that he could hear the fire whistle from his house and, one morning, when he was late for school, he heard that whistle and had a sinking feeling something was wrong.
As he was heading to his car, Brown got a phone call from a family friend who was a nurse at the hospital. She told him his aunt was in a bad car accident, and he needed to get his mom to the hospital quick.
They arrived at the hospital in time to say their goodbyes before she passed away.
“Her death is what inspired me to do it,” he said of joining the emergency services field. “As soon as I graduated school, I was in it – learning what I could. I was what we would call an interior guy. I liked going into house fires. I was the guy that would kick down the front door and go in. I loved that.”
Brown went on to become an EMT and in 2016, he got a job at Pocahontas Memorial Hospital. He was commuting from Richwood and looking for a place to live in Marlinton when Richwood was hit by a devastating flood.
“I lost everything in that flood,” he said. “The kind folks at PMH that I worked with, they located a house up here. I actually moved in the 4th of July that year.”
By 2018, Brown became a 911 dispatcher where he learned about and saw every inch of Pocahontas County, thanks to a special project given to him by then director Michael O’Brien.
“Mike needed help with the road signs in the county,” Brown said. “I volunteered. I wanted to know everything about this county. I’m glad I did. He put me on that project with Brandon [Kelly] and I got to see and learn parts of this county that I never knew existed.”
After seven years as a dispatcher, Brown moved up the ranks to the director position in August and has been using all his experience and skill to ensure that the county is as protected and safe as much as he possibly can.
“I’m in charge of everything here in this building, and I’m pretty much the liaison for the entire county,” he said. “I mitigate disasters and come up with preparedness plans for anything from floods to crazy stuff.
“I get outside resources coming in if we need to – if our resources in the county can’t handle something,” he continued. “I’m the middleman for all that. I report everything to the state, kind of give them a rundown of what’s going on as it’s happening.”
Although the federal government has yet to pass a bill that recognizes 911 dispatchers as first responders, the state has given that recognition and Brown said he wants people to understand that dispatchers are not secretaries, answering phones and transferring calls.
They are the first to help those who have a medical emergency, car accident or fire.
“We’ve got nine screens we’re watching here; we’ve got radios; we’ve got telephones,” he said. “We’re monitoring all this stuff and then when you get multiple calls coming in, it’s difficult sometimes because then you have to prioritize calls.”
Brown said he hopes to invite emergency service members, such as firefighters, EMTs, paramedics and law enforcement to come to the 911 center to see the dispatchers in action and get a feel for what happens before they are dispatched.
“I know they know what we do here, but they don’t exactly know what it is that we go through to get some of these calls through to them,” he said. “I want to invite them in in small groups and just show them. I want to give them a hands-on look.”
Brown has a lot of plans for the future – ways to get more training in the county so volunteers don’t have to travel so far to get certified, as well as ways to get the community involved and provide them with trainings for things such as CPR and first aid.
“I want to have an actual training center somewhere in the county,” he said. “I want a big fire/EMS – even law enforcement – center that is big enough where we can house people. We can do fire schools, or we could bring EMT classes in here.
“We’re getting the search and rescue team off the ground,” he continued. “I want to bring trainings here, so they don’t have to travel so far to do training. We’ve got a perfect place to do it here.
“That’s a project that’s way down the road.”
For now, Brown and his part-time assistant Charles Evans, will continue to focus on what they can do to keep the county safe.
It may not have been where he grew up, but Brown said Pocahontas County has always had a special place in his heart.
“I remember coming over here as a kid,” he said. “Dad always brought me here. We’d come to Cass every fall. Pocahontas County just felt like home. Always did. And I finally made it here.”
Brown has become an active member of the community; he is in the Masonic Lodge and is a Shriner. He also attends a lot of games at Pocahontas County High School where his niece “plays everything under the sun.”
Needless to say, Brown has made himself at home and is ready to keep that home safe.
