RICHMOND, Va. -- It's been over 24 hours since an explosion inside a Dinwiddie County High School sent multiple people to the hospital for burns, including students and a teacher.
The long wait to find out if their children were okay was a difficult time for parents. This time was made even harder on dispatchers who sent emergency crews to their children's school.
"We got a radio from the school resource office at the high school and you can hear the alarms going off in the background," Mary Burnett, whose daughter was inside the school at the time of the explosion, said.
"Yeah, it was a lot of things going on," Marquita Clinton, whose daughter was also inside the school, said.
As more calls came into the room, the dispatchers began to send first responders to the school.
Mary and Marquita weren't just concentrating on their jobs because they both had daughters inside the school.
"It was stressful, but I still had to make sure that we answered our radios, we sent units there and just prayed my child was okay," Clinton said.
"At that time, I had to be a dispatcher, I had to worry about the community firsthand, then my child. It was hard, it was very hard," Burnett said.
As more units arrived, the request for medical helicopters was made. As the minutes moved forward, more calls came in.
"My daughter is right there, in the front of my mind trying to figure out where she is, what's going on with her," Burnett said.
Marquita, who was still working dispatch, realized her daughter was still inside the school.
"I was nervous, my daughter's classroom was actually next door to the one where the explosion happened," Clinton said.
Supervisors commended these dispatchers, among with others, for remaining strong during the difficult situation.
"They persevered through it, through their nervousness, they handled the radio and the phones as they should without a misstep," Tiffany Beckles, the supervisor of 911 dispatchers, said.
As with other parents, the two dispatchers eventually learned that both their daughters were okay.
"When I first saw her, I did hug her," Burnett said.
"When she got in the car, I reached over and hugged her and she was like 'mom', and I said, 'girl, you just don't know, mama was worried," Clinton said.
The dispatchers said that working through Wednesday's incident will make them better at their job. While they could have taken a mental health day, all three said they love what they do and their coworkers and that this is where they want to be.
