After 35 years working with Williamson County Public Safety, its director, Bill Jorgensen, is retiring on July 12. His immediate retirement plans include spending more time with his wife, Leigh, his three adult children and his grandson.
“I’ve enjoyed the team of people I get to work with every day,” he said. “[But] I love being home.”
His long range plans are to travel the country enjoying the sights, taking photos, and entering them in Williamson County Fair’s photography contests — he’s had quite a few winners over the years. He also looks forward to increasing the size of his honey bee hives.
“The honey bee is absolutely amazing!” he said. “We’ve been doing beekeeping since 2010. We have five hives now. We want to add a hive and then hope to have enough honey to sell. We have a lot of fun with [the bees].”
He also plans to spend more time on his ham radio and reconnecting with amateur radio friends. Jorgensen’s interest in the ham radio began as a young boy on a bike with a CB radio and grew in later years.
Today amateur radios play an important part of Williamson County’s public safety emergency plan. Jorgensen established the county-wide amateur radio repeaters system known as the Williamson County Amateur Radio Emergency Service (WCARES), one of many cogs in the Public Safety wheel.
His interest in Public Safety piqued in 1985 after he paid a visit to Brentwood Fire & Rescue and witnessed what happens when a call comes in.
“I thought, wow!” he said. “I was hooked and joined the Williamson County Rescue Squad — that got me into Emergency Services.”
For 11 years, from 1985-1996 Jorgensen served with the county rescue squad at several stations and earned numerous certifications in firefighting and emergency services.
In 1989 Jorgensen was hired by the county as a tele-communicator, commonly known as 911 Dispatch, who “receives and processes emergency calls then dispatches to appropriate resources.” In 1991 he was promoted to Communications director responsible for the 911 Emergency Communications Center and its budget.
During the early years of the 911 call center, emergency calls went to one center and after the operator got the address from the caller, diverted it to another operator to dispatch the necessary services. There was no GPS so emergency technicians really needed to know the roads in their area.
By the early 1990s, the county began to experience its first burst of real growth, and the process of updating emergency services began. By 1994 the 911 calls from the Sheriff’s office, Fairview Police Department and Spring Hill were consolidated into one center. Brentwood joined soon after.
Between 1991 and 2010 Jorgensen was involved in a variety of local, regional and state emergency programs, committees and services as emergency services evolved into a professional, all-inclusive initiative. Around 1999 the Williamson County Department of Communication was created.
“At some point, I became manager of the Dispatch Center,” he said. “It was the first department to have email and its own network servers.”
The Dispatch Center was located in the basem*nt of the Administrative Complex.
Through those years, Jorgensen honed his managerial and leadership skills.
“The county started leadership groups within departments,” he said. “Leadership comes from experience — good and bad.”
After experiences with the effects of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the several tornadoes that came through areas in Williamson County over the years and the damage they did, in 2009 County Mayor Rogers Anderson took action. He put together a public safety task force to make recommendations and create an organization to oversee a public safety program and build a structure to house the program. Jorgensen and the Public Safety officials began researching and planning for every possible scenario weather, transportation crashes, terrorist attacks, explosions, national events and more.
Then 2010 hit.
“We had some rain and a little flood,” Jorgensen said in jest.
From May 1-2, the Nashville area of Middle Tennessee, including Williamson County, experienced two back to back record days of rainfall for a total of more than 13 inches.
Rivers, streams, ponds and low areas hit flood stage and overflowed. By nightfall of May 1, the water rose from streams and saturated low areas in subdivisions so fast, there was little time to evacuate leaving many people stranded on the second floor of their home, on roofs and floating on swim floats.
There was no electricity, land line phone service or cell phone services. Cell towers were down or flooded, roads and bridges were being washed away. Vehicles were swept off roads and canoes and boats became modes of transportation.
The 911 call center in the basem*nt of the Administrative Complex had water creeping in and eventually reached halfway up the doors. Operators and anyone who could get through the flooded streets to the Administrative Complex worked to get equipment out of the water’s reach while maintaining contact with first responders. All the boats every agency had and anything that floated was grabbed and used to save people from and in the rising waters.
After the flood, “We had been wanting some paint and a new carpet to spruce up [the call center],” Jorgensen said. The mayor said ‘No. Build a building. It‘s the right time.’ In 2011 the committee moved forward and we created the Office of Public Safety in the Public Safety Center. “
In 2011 county emergency agencies “moved forward to create the Office of Public Safety,” Jorgensen said, adding he was named director of Public Safety. “Six months after the flood all sorts of things started moving.”
Construction started on the Public Safety Center in 2015 and it opened in November 2016. It had some of the most modern plans for responding to emergencies. Jorgensen has been a part of creating and maintaining the high level of emergency expertise and equipment.
“It’s important to understand history, where you’ve been before you know where you’re going,” Jorgensen said. “How can you know where you’re going if you don’t know where you’ve been? This program will continue, but [those running it] have to know where it’s been.”
