Emergency line call-takers and dispatchers receive over a thousand calls every day on average, but about one in 10 of those callers hang up or abandon their calls before officials can figure out what the problem is.
“I have had at least five today,” Charleston County dispatcher Marea Quijano said one afternoon on July 27. “I start to answer, ‘click.’ They hang up.”
In June 2026, the Charleston County Emergency Communications Center received 25,649 calls. Of those, 2,862 — or about 10.04% — were “abandoned.” This means either the caller hung up before dispatchers answered, or failed to reply to dispatchers once the line connected…