GUILFORD COUNTY, N.C. (WGHP) — 911 call centers in the western part of North Carolina are inundated right now as people start to clean up and look for their loved ones after Helene.
With such a high volume, many of those calls are being diverted to Guilford County.
“They’re crying. They’re emotional. They’re very worried and frantic,” Deputy Director of Operations for Guilford Metro 911 Christine Moore said.
These calls are some of the hardest to take for Guilford Metro 911 telecommunicators.
“We’re receiving everything from people wanting to do welfare checks on family members they haven’t seen or heard from, but we’re also doing medical calls, fire rescues. It runs the gamut,” Moore said.
They started taking calls from the western part of the state on Friday and have gotten 140 calls since.
The calls are coming from Buncombe, Macon, Transylvania, Yancey, Avery, Graham, Burke, Henerson, Jackson, Haywood and McDowell Counties. They’re being re-routed through a statewide telephone system, but these calls are logistically more difficult.