News Photo by Julie Riddle Kim Elkie, left, newly appointed Alpena County 911 director, examines an emergency responder radio with dispatcher Adam Lumsden last week.

ALPENA — While firefighters, police, and medical responders rush to protect the community in times of need, the head of a county 911 office sits on the front lines of information, said Kim Elkie, recently appointed to serve as Alpena County’s 911 director.

Replacing Mark Hall, who retired in December, Elkie had served as interim 911 director since Jan. 5 and officially assumed the role this week.

Thrown into the emergency response world when COVID-19 crept into the county shortly after she took a position working for the county’s Board of Commissioners, Elkie was part of a team that spent months in the county’s Emergency Operations Center, making sure the county held together during the crisis.

That experience of chaos-surrounded focus, and the relationships she built during that time with local, state, and federal resources, will help her make sure the county does the best it can to protect its residents when they call for help, Elkie said.

“I can give you two words why I’m sitting here,” Elkie said last week in her office across a hallway from the dimly-lit 911 dispatch room. “Radios and COVID.”

Not long after she joined the commissioners’ staff in June 2019, someone asked Elkie to help then-911 director Hall write a request that would eventually net the county hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of free first responder radios.

Shortly before, a firefighter’s mayday call did not make it back to dispatchers on the county’s old equipment, said Elkie, whose brother works as a firefighter.

“I don’t know much about radios,” Elike said. “But I know they need them, and I know they need them to work. A failed mayday is not an option.”

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Writing a proposal to secure 125 new radios that could help firefighters make it home to their families changed her perspective on her ability to help protect the community, Elkie said.

In her previous work in the commissioners’ office, she defined herself as an office assistant and nothing more.

“But, when someone says you can write this and save lives, that’s very powerful,” she said.

The 911 director job she now holds can lack the intensity of the months in the Emergency Operations Center, often consisting of handling equipment problems, attending meetings, or wrangling with sales reps to make sure dispatchers have what they need.

At central dispatch, however, “at any given moment, it can break loose in there,” Elkie said as a dispatcher across the hall took a 911 call.

During the trial-by-fire days of 2020, marked by uncertainty and ever-changing reports of infections and restrictions, Elkie, Hall, and an expanding team of community partners responded on the fly to the vagaries of state and local pandemic response.

“Every day we came in not knowing if the shoe was going to drop,” Elkie said, remembering the day she spent in a morgue counting body bags in case the region faced an onslaught of deaths.

Responding to COVID-19 meant piles of paperwork, requesting what would eventually add up to more than $730,000 in federal pandemic relief funding for the county, with more receipts ready for submission if more grant opportunities crop up.

The months in the EOC also meant Elkie now has a long list of contacts at all levels, from the local police heads to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, that she now intends to put to use keeping Alpena County connected to emergency resources it needs.

“I know I have to get off the porch and run with the big dogs,” said Elkie, who, as the county’s first female 911 director, will be called on to lead in a largely male-dominated world of public safety. “But I think I can do it in a dress.”

Making sure someone shows up when a resident dials 911 takes more than just the effort of a 911 director – it takes many people willing to prioritize community safety, she said.

“It’s about everybody bringing what they’ve got to the table,” she said. “And then it’s enough.”

Julie Riddle can be reached at 989-358-5693 or jriddle@thealpenanews.com. Follow her on Twitter @jriddleX.