Floods? Tornadoes? Fires? … No problem.
Allen County’s new Emergency Operations Center (EOC) has got you covered.
The center and its upgrades were made possible thanks to $120,000 in federal CARES Act money, and comes just in time for heightened severe weather.
Jason Trego, Emergency Management Coordinator for Allen County, was kind enough to provide this Register reporter a tour of the new center, along with an overview of its many bells and whistles.
“When we get into high winds, larger hail, the possibility of a tornado, we’re 100% going to be in here,” he said.
And the EOC can also function as a command post for entities like the sheriff’s office, a place from where critical operations can be directed.
In short, the center is where emergency personnel turn when a situation reaches “a little more serious level.”
As for the EOC’s specific features, Trego showed how it’s possible to project a screen containing four different area maps simultaneously.
One map, for example, might display wind speeds in relation to local towers, another, flood data and the impact of water reaching various depths.
While you’re map-reading, you can implement the room’s rotating camera to chat with a colleague over Zoom, and since emergency personnel
often must sit for hours at a time, you can hold your virtual meeting while kicking back in one of the EOC’s fancy ergonomic chairs.
Another gizmo the EOC has is an interface for storm-spotters (connected to the National Weather Service), where you can communicate with other spotters and follow highly localized weather in real time.
For example, Trego’s most recent entry stated that pea-sized hail was reported in Iola Tuesday evening, and similar reports from innumerable places are available.
There is also an interface for “hot spot notifications,” which uses geosynchronous satellite imagery to detect fires from an incredible distance.
Trego said that the system is so sensitive that it once detected a single stump left burning in a local pasture after multiple days.
