EOC Up and Running in Butte, Montana

Feb. 16--BUTTE -- Be it an earthquake or Ebola outbreak, a major plane crash or a wildfire that engulfs the East Ridge, Butte-Silver Bow now has a state-of-the-art command center where disasters will be sized up and relief efforts coordinated.

After six years of pitching, planning, political maneuvering and piecemeal financing, a $3.5 million building at 3615 Wynne Ave. on the Flat is complete and home to the county's emergency operations center, the Butte district of the Montana Highway Patrol, and a driver's license bureau.

Its "Smart Boards" and computers and a backup 911 system can run around the clock for 20 days even if electricity is out everywhere else and continue to operate after that with more diesel fuel.

There are other centralized emergency operation centers in Montana, but Butte might have bragging rights now for having the newest and best of everything.

They come with heightened expectations should disaster strike.

"We are going to try to become the best emergency management operations in the state -- we certainly have the facility to do it now," said Dan Dennehy, Butter-Silver Bow's director of emergency management.

"There are no excuses now. This is the mecca of emergency management facilities in the state. We should be able to do good things for our citizens."

The needs were real.

The county's "operations center" had been housed in the basement of the Butte-Silver Bow Courthouse, where conditions were cramped and equipment outdated or simply lacking.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, after a disaster drill for a simulated airline crash at Bert Mooney Airport in 2008, cited numerous shortcomings in the county's emergency response operations.

Major improvements were needed in management and direction of the operations center, the agency said. Plans and procedures were in need of updating, additional trained staff was needed to man the center, and big improvements were needed in technology and hardware.

"In the basement you couldn't even hear yourself think," Dennehy said. "It was not an effective way to communicate in a disaster or an emergency because you're on top of each other and you're listening to some other person's conversation and you're forgetting about what you're supposed to be doing."

The new building, down to most every detail, is designed to change all that.

"All the bells and whistles"

Take the interior walls of some rooms, for example. They are partially carpeted, and sliding partitions that can divide the largest room are fully carpeted for a reason.

The largest room is where most of the monitoring, planning, logistics and emergency operation decisions will be made. In a disaster, there could be a dozen or more separate conversations going on at once.

"Carpeting on them (the walls) deadens the sound so you don't get that hollow sound, and you're able to talk without hearing echoes and everything else going on," said Capt. Gary Becker, commander of the Highway Patrol's Butte district.

The district's prior officers were located at the same location and were torn down to make room for the new building.

There are numerous cable and power outlets on floors and walls throughout the new building so computers and laptops and TVs and other electronic devices can be utilized virtually everywhere.

"There are more plug-ins and databanks in one room than we had in my entire former building," Becker said.

The fanciest features are Smart Boards -- large, flat screens that offer touch control of computer applications and the ability to write over Microsoft Windows applications. They can be written on and erased with a stylus and be viewed by an entire room of people.

Aerial views of Butte can be displayed showing buildings and streets and the screen drawn on to show where police, firefighters or other emergency personnel should be deployed and what streets should be blocked.

Say there's a wildfire on either side of the East Ridge. Personnel on the scene can use tablets or laptops to send pictures or video to the operations center.

"Everyone could see from here what is going on up there in real time," Becker said. "You can have people here and there and you may need to move them down a little farther and reroute traffic this way. You can do all of that interaction on this board."

There are three Smart Boards in the building, collectively costing $30,000, and they can all be linked so displays and writings on one can be seen on the others.

Wifi is available throughout, and the entire center can be powered by a huge, $77,000 generator that holds 150 gallons of diesel, with a 1,000-gallon tank next to it. Together they could keep everything running for 20 days.

Dennehy said equipment alone cost $468,000 and the county could largely thank former emergency management director Roger Ebner, who left in 2013 to take a job in Albuquerque, N.M., for getting it.

"He envisioned one building where everything is operating and efficient, and he wanted all the bells and whistles that went along with it," Dennehy said.

Worth the wait

The Highway Patrol offices and driver's license bureau -- collectively called the Butte Justice Center -- are all new, too.

The patrol's section includes work stations for all 14 troopers in the district office, a room where guns can be cleaned, and a large garage. There is a separate interview room with video cameras that cover multiple angles. In the old building, interviews usually were done in someone's cramped office.

"This whole building gives us the ability to do our day-to-day operations in a manner that we're not walking over the top of each other," Becker said. "And it just gives more of a professional image."

It took a long time, a lot of political haggling, and creative cobbling of finances to get there.

It began on the federal side with $800,000 included in a Homeland Security appropriations bill passed in October 2009. The Montana Legislature steered $1.6 million to the project in 2013, Butte-Silver Bow contributed $500,000, and the state shored up funding with another grant in late 2013. Another federal grant paid for the equipment.

Construction finally started last year, and a grand opening is set for this Thursday. Chief Executive Matt Vincent will be among those attending.

"It took a long time, but in a lot of ways, this is a great example of how government can work together," Vincent said. "I mean this is state, local and federal governments working together, and the result is a great facility."

Dennehy agrees.

"It was a long time coming but I think the final product was worth the wait," he said.

Copyright 2015 - The Montana Standard, Butte