In 9-1-1, "normal" is almost an oxymoron. What we face each day is anything but ordinary. Our "normal" is hearing the raw fear in a mother's voice, the helplessness of someone witnessing a tragedy, the desperate hope of someone clinging to life. We respond without hesitation, carrying their burdens in the quiet spaces between calls. Because of this reality, we must train not just for the expected, but for the extraordinary—those moments that challenge not only our skills, but our very spirit.

"In the midst of an ordinary training day, I try to remind myself that I am preparing for the extraordinary." It's not just about policy and protocol; it's about preparing our hearts and minds to be the calm in someone else's chaos. It’s about ensuring that when the unimaginable happens, we don’t freeze. We rise.

Many of you have heard me speak about the Las Vegas Shooting, but another story from the Las Vegas Strip highlights the same lesson. One evening, while working dispatch for Clark County Fire Battalion 2, which covers most of the world-famous Las Vegas Strip, a call popped into my pending queue that would make my heart drop: a report of the High Roller—the massive Ferris wheel-like ride at the LINQ—being stuck and immobile.

But the story started earlier that night.

Two hours before the call, a local news affiliate phoned our center, asking if anything was happening at the High Roller. I quickly answered "no," because we had no information—and honestly, even if we did, I wasn’t about to confirm anything to the media! (Those of you in dispatch know that dance all too well.) An hour later, one of our Deputy Chiefs called to ask the same thing. Again, I said "no," and we both chuckled about how the news seemed to be stirring something up out of nothing.

Feeling a little too comfortable, I broke the ultimate dispatch superstition: I told the Chief, "It's been quiet tonight." (Cue the ominous music.)

Sure enough, two hours later, a high-angle rescue incident popped into my pending queue. The High Roller had been stuck for two hours, and now the call was ours to handle. My CAD recommended dispatching over 22 fire companies and more than 70 firefighters. This was a massive response, and I had no idea what the game plan was. As a dispatcher, being clueless feels like a nightmare. Dispatching is like chess: you need to be several moves ahead. That night, I was playing checkers while everyone else was playing 3D chess on a roller coaster.

The rescue plan was daunting: firefighters would either climb up and rope people down pod-by-pod or, for the highest pods, send a helicopter to lift them out. (A "hard pass" if there ever was one!)

But here’s the thing: Clark County Fire trained for this. They prepared for it. They hosted quarterly clinics on high-angle rescues, training firefighters from across the world on that very ride. Meanwhile, we—the first, first responders—had never trained for that moment. We had to figure it out on the fly.

Every single day in 9-1-1 brings a new challenge, a new chance for the unimaginable to unfold. As Gordon Graham wisely says, "Predictable is preventable." It's easy to focus on the calls we know. But it's the rare, once-in-a-career moments that define us.

We spend most of our time preparing for the 99% of calls we know well. But it’s the 1%—the truly extraordinary—that tests our readiness and resilience.

In 9-1-1, we must live by the motto: "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit." We cannot afford to guess our way through a crisis. We have to live it, breathe it, train for it, until excellence becomes our instinct.

That’s where reality-based training comes in. We need to create scenarios that feel real—that make our hearts race, our palms sweat, and our minds sharpen—so that when the real thing happens, we don't think. We act. We rely on muscle memory built through sweat, focus, and sometimes even a little fear.

Reality-based training is not just about preparing for the extraordinary. It's about preserving ourselves. It's about ensuring that when the worst happens, we are not broken by it—we are ready for it.

Reality-based training will be the focus of Part 2. In Parts 3 and 4, we'll dive into center design, surge readiness, and operational resilience—the infrastructure that holds us up when everything else falls apart.

Because the truth is: heroes aren't made in moments of chaos. They're revealed there.

Thank you, dispatchers, for being the steady hands, the strong hearts, and the unseen heroes behind every siren, every rescue, every life saved. Every week, every day, every hour, every minute, and every call—you are extraordinary.