One of Marblehead’s very own was selected to join the state’s Telecommunicator Emergency Response Task Force (TERT), a “team of certified and credentialed public safety telecommunicators.”
Amy Gilliland, who currently leads the joint Marblehead Police and Fire Dispatch Center, opted to take on the responsibility of joining the TERT in addition to her role as the town’s “dispatch supervisor rock star,” the police department wrote in a Facebook post.
Gilliland keeps “everyone highly trained and prepared to perform a difficult job in a professional and most responsive manner,” police wrote. Her new role with TERT will “allow for her many skills to be utilized,” the post reads.
According to the state, TERT members “respond, relieve, assist and/or augment [Public Safety Access Points] affected by manmade or natural disasters.”
Response to the program, officials said, has “exceeded expectations,” and the task force currently has 57 members.
TERT, according to the state, was developed in partnership with the Massachusetts Executive Office of Public Safety and Security, the State 911 Department, the Statewide Office of Public Safety Interoperability and the Massachusetts Chapter of the National Emergency Number Association.
To become a member of the task force, applicants must have a public safety background with a minimum of three years of experience in dispatch operations, an excellent working knowledge of the appropriate public safety emergency response operation and equipment as it relates to the member’s role, and an ability to adapt to poor environmental conditions such as no beds, cold meals and no running water, among other things, according to the state.