While a flurry of other calls about emergencies across Canberra take place around him, a call taker is guiding a patient through a medical incident.

Behind him is a sea of screens, of street maps, constantly updating information and call-times.

"This may sound like a silly question, but are you just in pain or can't you move?" the call taker asks. "Just pain? Ok."

Before ambulance crews were on the scene assessing the situation, a team deep within the bowels of a building in Fairbairn were calling the shots of what should happen and who should respond.

For many Canberrans, their first port of call in an emergency situation are the men and women who work in the ACT Emergency Services Agency triple zero call centre.

On a busy day, communications coordinator George McDermid said the triple zero centre can be "organised chaos".

"Friday and Saturday nights are quite busy, with people out drinking, and the number of calls we get then tends to fluctuate," Mr McDermid said.

"We tend to be most busy during the day, however. We have a mini peak of calls around 5pm when people head home from work."

On an average day officers deal with 120 calls.

Mr McDermid, who has worked at the centre for almost nine years, said the busiest day the centre experienced was 172 calls in December 2016.

"When we're really busy, we're triaging, so we can get to the people who are the most sick first," he said.

The triple zero centre handles emergency calls for fire and ambulance but has separate teams for each. ACT Policing emergency calls are handled in a separate location.

Emergency Services Agency risk and planning director David Foot said the majority of calls are for ambulance assistance.

"During the last financial year, the medical emergency side of the room dealt with around 52,000 incidents, while on the fire side there was around 10,500," Mr Foot said.

Mr Foot said predicting patterns of emergency calls can be challenging, but trends do emerge.

"We start getting peaks from about 7am onwards and it builds until about 11 when it peaks. It continues solidly until about 10 or 11 at night and then it starts to scale down until the quietest time at 3 or 4am," he said.

The centre is equipped to handle all the fire and ambulance calls that come through. When a large-scale emergency happens like the recent Pierces Creek bushfire, operations step up a gear.

Once multiple calls come through about a single incident and crews deem it serious enough, a dedicated team move into an incident management centre right next door.

Inside the room, weather radars monitor the situation across the territory in the event of a bushfire, with there also being a dedicated station to send public safety messages to every mobile phone in the area in the event of a disaster.

"A car and a truck have crashed into a building in Belconnen. I don't have any more information than that at the moment, but firefighters are on the scene checking the structural integrity of it."

It was just after 2pm on a Thursday when a truck, believed to have suffered a mechanical failure on a work site, started to roll down a ramp before crashing into a car, launching straight through the window of a Chinese restaurant.

In the triple zero centre, seconds are everything and can mean the difference between life and death.

"The importance of the team is critical, without a doubt," Mr Foot said.

"People don't ring triple zero because they're having a good day, they're ringing the number on one of the worst days of their life or they've witnessed something that needs urgent assistance."

As well as a direct line to any fire or ambulance crew in the territory, the centre also has pinpointed the whereabouts of 10 rescue helicopters across the ACT and NSW.

Mid-afternoon on a Thursday when the Sunday Canberra Times visited the centre, Canberra's lone helicopter was involved in a job south of Cooma, transferring a patient to Canberra Hospital.

However, not all calls that come through to the centre are, strictly speaking, emergencies.

"I wouldn't say there are many, but it happens from time to time," Mr McDermid said.

"A lot of people will ring up when they just want some medical advice."

ACT Policing have taken to calling out the behaviour on their Twitter page.

In the two years Emily Jones has been taking triple zero calls in Canberra, she's learnt to be prepared for any scenario.

"A day in the triple zero centre can be anything. It can go from zero to 100 in a space of five minutes. You never know what to expect," she said.

Already working in communication services, Ms Jones said the job at the centre was a natural fit.

Alongside her normal duties in taking calls, she was also working alongside a new recruit to the centre as part of a mentoring role, a key part of the training process.

In order to become a triple zero call taker, recruits have to go through 18 weeks of training, much of it spent on the job.

"There's specific call-taker training, which takes about six weeks, and once they finish that, there's courses on how to deal with stress and the occupation itself," Mr Foot said.

"They then spend six weeks being mentored in the office itself before going on to a supervised position."

With many days in the occupation dealing with Canberrans in the worst days of their life, often in traumatic situations, Mr Foot said support for staff is critical.

"Staff deal with some really difficult calls. Often they're speaking to people who have witnessed heart attacks, or a child has been hit by a car, or someone has drowned or there's a fire with multiple injuries," Mr Foot said.

"They're trained to recognise their own symptoms early, so if they need support, there's a range of mechanisms in place.

"It could be something like having a coffee and chat with another colleague or seeking additional support, but there's always support for them."

Despite the high intensity and the rigour required for the job, Ms Jones said being able to help Canberrans when they need it most has been deeply rewarding, with a large sense of camaraderie between the call takers.

"It can be challenging at times, but very rewarding in helping people and getting people there to help them," she said.