(TNS) — It was just before 8 p.m. May 25, and Renae Coolidge was just hanging up her phone at the Frederick County Emergency Communications Center after helping a resident set up a burn permit. In the seat next to her, fellow 911 call-taker Kim Woolcock gave her a sympathetic smile, having just finished taking a similar call herself.

“There’s going to be a lot of those this week,” Woolcock said, explaining that a countywide burn ban will go into effect June 1 and last until Aug. 31, meaning that any farmers who need to burn waste would likely call in.

But a truly quiet night is an anomaly at the ECC, where life-or-death emergencies are only a three-digit phone call away. A minute later, Woolcock was talking to a man who had just witnessed a serious crash on the exit ramp from Interstate 70 onto South East Street/Md. 85.

“We think he might be inebriated, like, drunk,” the caller said, his words coming quickly with anxiety. “Because he flew up that ramp and he must have been going almost 100 mph. Honestly, I don’t know how he got through that intersection without getting killed.”

Her voice remaining calm, Woolcock quickly got the man to focus, gleaning important information from him as she typed up the call. As she was writing it, the information was also being fed to her colleagues dispatching police and rescue personnel to the scene.

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