Jack Doughney Palm Beach Gardens Fl

State-of-the art building will serve during hurricanes and as a 911 center for the Gardens, Juno Beach & Jupiter

Inset: The new EOC fills in the city complex. Above: The entrance to the plain brown building, middle, is through two sets of doors.

EVEN BACK-UP PLANS AND equipment are backed up, sometimes multiple times, at the new Palm Beach Gardens Emergency Operations Center. "We have multiple redundancy," said Gardens police chief Stephen Stepp. "We are as ready as we can possibly be. You can't say it's fail safe from every disaster, but the chance of failure here is remote."

More than six years of planning and a tightly coordinated effort between city departments resulted in the $4.3 million EOC facility. It sits between City Hall and the police department on the government campus at Burns Road and Military Trail.

The first trial test of all its systems is slated for April 11, and if all systems are "go," it will become fully operational in early May.

Loaded with high-tech tools for communication, locating incidents and providing a safe command center for emergency personnel, the 10,000-plussquare feet facility will serve much of the north county area in case of a major disaster.

But residents won't have to wait for a hurricane or other broad emergency to see it in action.

"We designed this so it would be functional 365 days a year. It will be used for something relating to emergency management all the time," said Jack Doughney, Gardens deputy city manager.

The Emergency Operations Center, seen here under construction, has reinforced concrete block walls and two inches of concrete on its roof. It sits behind a stage between City Hall and the police department and is designed to withstand upper Category 5 hurricane winds of 205 mph.

Peter Bergel, fire chief for Palm Beach Gardens, said other EOC facilities typically are used only two or three days a year. "They have no flexibility."

Palm Beach Gardens Fire Chief Peter Bergel (left) IT Director Eric Holdt and Police Chief Stephen Stepp stand outside the city's municipal complex, near the Emergency Operations Center.

The EOC will house a shared dispatch department for Palm Beach Gardens, Juno Beach and Jupiter police departments 24 hours a day year round. Other areas will be used often for emergency training with other agencies and nearby cities.

"It not only improves efficiency and saves them money, but helps in coordinating incidents that might involve more than one jurisdiction," said Chief Bergel.

Fire Chief Peter Bergel checks out one of the movable desks in the EOC's 275-seat classroom.

Juno Beach acting Chief of Police Brian Smith said the new dispatch center will put all three municipalities on the same radio system and give them all access to more resources.

"It's important to the officers' safety, too," Chief Smith said. "We can monitor what's going on in the surrounding municipalities," and draw from or add to response teams as needed. "It's been a long road getting here, but I'm looking forward to it."

A Category 5 building

The center has been in the planning stages since the 2004 hurricane season. That summer brought hurricanes Frances and Jeanne to the city's doorstep, leaving massive damage to the area and causing tense moments among emergency personnel who rode out the storms in city buildings.

City Hall and the police department are rated for 111 mph winds; the wind speed during the two 2004 storms was 117 mph. "We were afraid the roof was going to go," Chief Stepp said. "We virtually had a fortified office in a gym closet on Burns Road. There were some scary moments."

The situation was strained around the city as well, as the response teams tried to handle numerous emergencies at once. "We had dispatchers on the phone, crying, and a building collapse with people in the stairwell," Chief Stepp said.

The city decided to design a facility that will withstand winds to 205 mph — the top end of a Category 5 storm. It will house records, staff and serve as a complete command center to coordinate all the departments involved in handling emergencies.

Since Andrew, building codes in Florida have become much more stringent and after Katrina, The Federal Emergency Management Agency tightened its requirements for building strength as well.

"FEMA will rebuild a building once if it's destroyed. But it has to be rebuilt to come up to their code, or they won't pay for it a second time," Mr. Bergel said. "We made sure ours is up to FEMA standards."

The city had already spent money to reinforce the gym on Burns Road; it's also now a Category 5 building, according to Mr. Doughney.

Pirtle Construction Co. of Davie, which built the new Palm Beach Gardens High School, won the construction bid for the EOC. The school, too, is a Category 5 structure.

Work on the EOC began in February 2010.

Funding for the project came from the city's capital budget created from impact fees for fire and police services. The county kicked in for the new 911 dispatch center as well from a grant they received to modernize 22 of its 911 call centers. The county has the most dispatch centers in the state.

"We came in at budget," Mr. Bergel said. That was after scores of meetings between departments to decide on everything from the technology to chairs to office space and kitchen facilities for feeding the staff if they are holed up during a storm.

EOCs elsewhere studied

Research took the staffers around the country to see EOCs that have both failed and succeeded. They traveled to New Orleans more than once, where they brought back hard-learned lessons from the city devastated on several levels by Katrina.

"There are a lot of residual effects that the city government hasn't recovered from," Mr. Bergel said.

Chief Stepp also had personal experiences to share — he was an assistant police chief in North Miami during Hurricane Andrew.

"We had no communications — and offices were a milk crate under a tree," he recalled. The nearby city of Homestead and all its records were virtually wiped out — a situation no city government wants to be in, Chief Stepp said. "Some departments were unable to recover.

"If we don't have police records, or a 911 system working, radios to talk to the outside — we're dead. It sets us back 100 years or more. If all our records are intact, then one minute after the storms subside we're up and running."

He says it's not a matter of if, but when Palm Beach County gets the "big one" — a storm capable of the destruction like Andrew's. "We have to think in those terms.

We've built this as an investment that will last 40 to 50 years. But we haven't been tested yet."

Fortified and windowless

The EOC building itself isn't much to see. It was purposefully planned that way, Mr. Doughney said. "It was designed to blend in with the other city buildings that were already here — it looks like it's always been here."

Some visitors don't notice it, he said — it sits behind a wall that serves as a backdrop for the newly poured performance stage created for the courtyard.

It's a windowless concrete block building with an extra two inches of concrete poured on the roof, which is supported by concrete beams. There's lightning protection throughout the building.

Entry from the outside is through two sets of doors. They're another of the many back-up protections to keep out strong winds or contaminated air.

Little was spent on decor; just enough to make it comfortable, the police chief said. "It's not pretty; we wanted the residents to know we spent the money on the best and latest emergency management equipment and back-up systems we could get. We are responsible in an emergency for keeping them safe."

It's modern in every way, however. The building is up for a LEED (an environmentally and energy friendly design) silver certification, Mr. Bergel said. "It's energy efficient all around. The lights are on automatic switches and go out when there's no motion detected in the rooms. The AC automatically senses the temperature of the room, like when the room goes from one occupant to 30, and adjusts the thermostat accordingly." Recycled materials were used throughout.

Furniture does double- and triple-duty. The 175-seat classroom is set up with rows of portable tables and chairs in theater style. "These are all on wheels — they can be flipped up," Chief Stepp demonstrated the easy tilt-top table, "and rolled out of here to create a command center." Wall partitions open and create a room twice the size.

A panel on the long side of the tables lifts to reveal a web pocket through which wires can be strung to connect laptops and create an instant network inside the building with power from the high-powered generator.

"One of the problems with the other buildings is we had no protection for the IT in them. We had no dispatch back-up. If the lines went down, we were out of touch with the outside," said Eric Holdt, head of the IT department for the city.

In the new center, there's COOP — the continuity of operations program — put in place. Essentially, if all the outside lines go down in the other buildings, there will still be back up for servers that can connect them to other agencies and with one another.

Mr. Holdt said that AT&T and Comcast lines will run underground into the building. They're part of a ring, he said, so that if one input source fails, the other will take over — more backup planning. A link to the county's EOC is also part of the IT software.

Servers set into a special cooling room have removable floor panels to immediately get at wiring and connect other lines if needed. "The back-up battery kicks in for 10 seconds before the generator," Mr. Holdt said.

The massive 350 killowatt generator is the size of an airplane engine and takes up an entire room. A back-up to it — a portable generator — is kept in another building away from the EOC — just in case.

"We've got cable TV, satellite TV and rabbit-ear TV," Chief Stepp said, "multiple ways to find out what's going on."

The city has its own radio station as well, which will operate here, and the fire stations all have ham radios.

A satellite uplink is another safeguard. "If we lose everything here, we'll still have satellite communication from here with the mobile unit," he said. The satellite dish on top of the huge RV unit folds down for protection, and when activated, searches for the nearest telecommunication satellite. It's also capable of running the phone, radio and computer system.

Training ongoing

Though hurricanes are a chief concern in this area, and many of the systems are geared to deal with the storms, the center was designed to prepare emergency response to other natural and man-made disasters, from minor to catastrophic levels.

Dirty bombs, tankers releasing toxic gasses, civil uprisings, airline or train crashes, floods, fires, tornadoes — the list goes on.

Tsunamis and nuclear power mishaps were on everyone's mind with Japan in the news. But, Mr. Bergel said, they're actually unlikely to affect the EOC where it is located.

"We're well above the 100-year flood plain," he said. "Anything west of the Seacoast railroad tracks is considered safe. We're about 20 feet above sea level and west of the tracks."

And, he said, the depth of the ocean floor off the southeast coast of Florida will help disperse the wave height and force of a potential tsunami before it hits, and lessen the impact and coverage along the coast.

As for nuclear fall-out, Chief Stepp said, "We're halfway between Turkey Creek and the Port St. Lucie power plants. The radioactivity dissipation rate is based on time, distance and mass. Deep soil and concrete are considered good barriers — this is very thick concrete."

The staff members who will work in the command center have a number of training programs that deal with specific emergencies, Mr. Bergel said. He will be point man, overseeing the coordination effort between outside agencies and city departments.

"There's a lot of FEMA training and NIMS training — National Management Incident Training," — the latter developed since 9/11, he said. This training addresses larger-scale incidents that might affect a region or put the nation at threat — terrorist acts, for instance.

Palm Beach Gardens has been conducting training for several years, beyond the requirements. "We actually do a lot of training with NIMS, and we're ahead of other cities. We host classes for other agencies here," Chief Stepp said. The main room in the center will be used as a classroom for that purpose.

Dispatchers start the process

The city won't be alone as it manages an emergency. The EOC will help officials coordinate their response with other county, state and federal agencies and essential utilities, such as FEMA, the Red Cross, Florida Power and Light, the Utility District, Florida Public Utility and police and fire rescue stations.

The 20-plus dispatchers, hooked to the 911 system and working on computers, will take the calls and report incidents to the command center — the "war room" — down the hall. A bank of flat-screen monitors along a wall can display calls as they come in and help each jurisdiction and department see what's happening at one time.

"In the command room, we'll be able to have maps up on the screens, locations of every officer and fire truck, incident reports, videos and hear live reports. We can track what's going on countywide. We have AVL — auto vehicle locator — that tracks every vehicle we have out there. We can see what is happening all in one place and have group decision-making capabilities," Mr. Bergel said.

From the fire chief to police and other crews involved, first responders can be dispatched as needed. Resources throughout the north county area who are already in staging areas and ready to move can be called on.

Emergency responders go beyond fire-rescue and police officers, and include debris removal, heavy equipment operators, food providers, gas and electric crews, water and sewer management teams — whatever might be needed, he said to get the city back up on its feet.

Backing up the back-ups

Computer and phone lines, air-conditioning, power, water and even the sewer system have contingency backups. The center must function in any situation.

"We prepared ourselves to be selfsustainable. Our team takes pride in the fact we can operate six days with only what's available in the building," Mr. Bergel said.

Seventy people can be housed here comfortably, and six days of supplies are available. In other buildings on the city campus, including the Burns Road gym, food preparation and other essential services are located as satellite emergency areas.

A well is on the back of the property and can supply ground water to the EOC. A 1,000-gallon holding tank is available for sewer backup. Tankers can supply clean water, and gas for the generator. "These are the real McCoy tankers like you see at gas stations," Mr. Bergel said.

Satellite command posts, at the city's Parks Department building, Fire Station No. 4, and others will have their own self-sustainable "armies" that could, if cut off from other communications, act on their own, he said.

"It's being able to communicate as we need to, and put the responders right where they're needed when they're needed," said Chief Stepp, that qualifies as effective emergency management.

"The citizens of Palm Beach Gardens can be proud. The city is making it safe for them, and created this center to be able to react to virtually anything. Let's just hope we don't have to use it any time soon." ¦

in the know

>> The new EOC in Palm Beach Gardens
0 = windows
1 = fully equipped kitchen
2 = showers for staff
4 = number of Florida hurricanes in 2004 that
prompted the center
15 = 911 dispatch consoles
20 = dispatchers from the Gardens, Juno
Beach, and Jupiter working 24/7 in an emergency 70 = number of staff EOC houses optimally
175 = number of classroom seats
205 = wind speed in mph building can withstand 350 = kilowatts of power generated by back-up
generator
3000 = gallons of fuel backup generator holds
10,000 = square feet in building
4.3 millon = building cost, in dollars
6 days = length of time the EOC is 100 percent
self-sufficient
1 year = construction time on EOC
6 years = planning time for EOC
40-60 years = intended lifespan of building

— Jan Norris

gallaghergioneds.blogspot.com

Source: https://palmbeach.floridaweekly.com/articles/safe-haven/