Many screens displaying information, seats for more than 150 local emergency leaders and a multipurpose room for broadcasting news are features planned for Dallas County’s new Emergency Operations Center when it opens next year.
Building the nearly $40 million dollar modern facility from scratch has begun in West Dallas, beyond the central business district, in case downtown could be a target.
Plans for the center's total size is comparable to Dealey Plaza.
"The [emergency center] that we're currently in is a retrofitted warehouse," Dallas County Judge Clay Lewis Jenkins said. "So it has no special ability to withstand natural disaster or manmade disaster."
Vehicle bays and a service mezzanine will take up about a quarter of the building, which will sit beside a fire station.
Plenty of storage space and extended sleeping areas are also planned into the design, according to the bid proposal request.
The rest of the center will be for emergency official operations to prepare for, respond to and recover from disasters or crises — like severe weather or pandemics.
Weather radars, traffic cameras and news would continue to be monitored by using the best-available internet fiber.
The county required the facility to use low voltage systems and be Silver LEED certified.
Developers Kaizen Group, architect KAI Design, contractor Azteca Enterprises, consultant CBRE & OMS Strategic Advisors and project management McKissack & McKissack of Washington all agreed to follow county requirements.
“We would be able to post things, where the damages, where the flooding might be located, where shelters are being opened, where points of distribution are for food and water, what areas may be evacuated and where incidents, individual incidents of significance, might be taking place,” Emergency Services Chief Scott T. Forster said. “We could put it all on one map.”
The single-story concrete building plan is intended to withstand a F5-strength tornado.
Similarly, Jenkins hopes the design and features will allow emergency operations to continue even during unthinkable scenarios.
“If you have a situation like somebody set off a nuclear explosion, a mile or two above America, it's hard to know exactly all the different things that could happen, but the goal is to use the state of the art everything that we can get our hands on,” he said.
“People say, 'Well, gosh, you know, that's that's not an emergency that you should be worried about.' But the thing is, if that emergency happens, then the federal government is going to be focused on federal facilities and military response, and we're going to be focused for the people who live here, get their power restored, their medical device is still working, all of those things.”
Jenkins said a priority was accommodating leaders from up to a dozen area cities to gather, communicate and all be on the same page.
Major storm that affect 10-12 cities, they have a place where they can all come together.
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