N.W.T. 911 emergency dispatcher helps deliver baby

Just months into his new job, a Northwest Territories 911 dispatcher got a call that most emergency dispatchers go their entire careers without receiving.

Christopher Moore took the call from a distraught person trying to help a woman who had just gone into labour. He dispatched medics to help the woman, but the baby would not wait. 

Moore had to guide the woman through the birth — including cleaning off the baby, checking the child's breathing and cutting the umbilical cord.

"It's a huge deal," said Ashley Geraghty, the manager of the Northwest Territories 911 emergency program which launched in November.

"There's actually a club, the Stork Club, through our accrediting body, that kind of highlights this, just so people know that this is how 911 can help while folks are waiting for that emergency responder to arrive."

Moore will soon receive a pin identifying him as a member of the Stork Club. CBC News requested an interview with Moore, but the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs did not authorize him to speak before deadline.

An email from the department quoted the bilingual dispatcher as saying, "As a new emergency dispatcher, I feel a great sense of pride of having helped someone in a stressful moment of their life where the end result was a healthy baby being born into the world.

"I truly felt like I made a difference in providing pre-arrival instruction prior to the paramedics arriving on scene," the statement reads.

"Being born and having lived all my life in the North, I feel truly grateful to be able to give back to the people of the N.W.T."

To protect the confidentiality of the woman who gave birth, the department would not identify what community the birth took place in, or when it happened.

5 times as many calls for most serious emergencies

The N.W.T.'s new 911 service has been in operation since November 2019. Geraghty said during that time, dispatchers have fielded a total of 6,678 calls, ranging from the not-so-serious to the critical.

"The national average for Echo calls — or the worst kind of call you can get — is about two per cent [of total calls]," he said. "We're hitting 10 per cent."

Geraghty said 911 dispatchers in the N.W.T. have also been receiving a large number of calls that don't qualify as emergencies, though they may require medical treatment.

He's reminding people that the territory's 911 system does not include a feature that many people may assume it does.

"We really need people to know that it's not like on TV — we don't get people's addresses when they call us," he said. "So if we have people calling and hanging up, hoping for an emergency response, we don't know your address. You have to provide it."