Control Room
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DISASTER MANAGEMENT
The decision-makers handling a disaster have to be away from the chaos and closeted with the facts. That’s the purpose of an emergency operations center being built in Ramona, Calif.
Disaster planning and emergency operations have risen in priority for many municipalities, especially in the “earthquake country” of the Far West. As cities replace older fire facilities, the question of whether to include an emergency operations center, or EOC, in the new building is usually answered with a resounding “Yes!” by the powers that be.
However, those responsible for designing this specialized facility soon discover there’s very little information on EOC design. For that reason, 1 would like to share the results of my research for the Ramona (Calif.) Fire Department.
Ramona, a rapidly growing community in the eastern hills of San Diego County, will be replacing its headquarters fire station this summer. As the department’s disaster preparedness officer, I was assigned to design a multipurpose facility. It would serve as a meeting, training, and fire simulator room for the day-to-day needs of the department, and then transform smoothly to a fully functional, self-contained EOC when necessary. The design described here is, in part, the result of visits to other EOCs in the area.
When a disaster occurs, it’s essential that the people responsible for making the life-saving decisions associated with the emergency be gathered in one room or group of rooms. This separates these people from the confusion of the emergency scene while affording them the vital, face-to-face communications needed to effectively manage the incident.
The EOC provides the physical location for centralized data collection and decision-making, bringing together departments and agencies whose day-to-day activities are often widely dispersed from one another. This allows for the effective allocation of scarce resources, without duplication of effort, during the response and recovery phases of the disaster.
The building that houses the EOC must be able to withstand an earthquake in excess of 8.3 on the Richter scale, or the effects of a comparable threat in your particular area. The air conditioning and heating system should allow for closure to all outside air in case there’s a hazardous-material release upwind of the EOC. It should be possible to activate this feature by either electric or manual means.
A fire station emergency generator large enough to power all EOC functions is needed, even if partial shutdown of other areas of the station is necessary. If the fire station is to be powered day-to-day by a combination of gas and electricity, keep in mind that natural gas is lighter than air and propane is heavier. This may dictate whether you place your EOC above or below ground level. Another consideration for using gas: It wouldn’t be smart to build a facility that might have to be evacuated because of a broken gas or propane pipe. I recommend an all-electric building.
The entire fire station should also be equipped with batterypowered emergency lighting.
The EOC should be placed within its host building in such a way that strict security and isolation of its staff from news media and private citizens can be easily maintained. My personal preference is to place the EOC across the apparatus floor from the fire department’s reception area and administrative offices, and either above or below the kitchen and sleeping quarters of the 24-hour personnel. This way, the apparatus floor becomes a natural barrier to public intrusion while giving the EOC staff ready access to showers and dorms for rest and recovery.
When reporters or private citizens enter the fire station, they’re directed to a conference room where a public relations representative passes along information from the EOC. Thus all information is filtered before it passes to the public. If the community’s elected officials insist on being included in the EOC, the conference room, and not the EOC proper, becomes their place of operation.
The EOC in Figure 1 is approximately 55 square feet and has two lockable security entrances. During EOC operation, each entrance would have a guard assigned, with television monitors and intercom systems for additional screening. Guards shouldn’t admit anyone who’s not wearing an approved EOC name tag.
If the EOC is above or below the ground floor, it’s advisable to have an elevator just outside one of the security doors for the easy movement of heavy equipment (such as copy machines) to the EOC.
Because the area functions as the department’s training center during day-to-day operation, it should already be equipped with a retractable projection screen, televisions, a video recorder, and chalk boards, all of which the EOC staff will also use during an emergency.
Form follows function
The main room of the EOC is approximately 30 feet wide and 45 feet long, with storage rooms at the back for furniture, room dividers, clerical supplies, telephones, and everything else needed to operate the center. A large, metalbacked map of the community with a plastic cover is mounted high on the front wall so it can be seen from anywhere in the EOC.
To either side of the front of the main room, and separated by glass walls and doors, are two special rooms. One serves as the direction and control section, while the other contains the emergency communications dispatch center. The glass walls in these two special rooms allow for selective isolation from the areas just outside them when desired, but still permit a direct view of the large status map.
A hallway to the side of the main room provides access to an outside patio area (if the EOC is above ground level) and the kitchen and rest room facilities. A food and water storage room is stocked with enough provisions to sustain the EOC staff for up to two weeks.
An EOC will encompass a number of functions. (See Figure 2 for a generic functional chart and the staff requirements for each section.) It’s important that each section be situated in such a way that it retains its separate identity and yet is able to move information smoothly between itself and other sections.
Refer once again to Figure 1 to see how all sections are placed in distinct areas according to their function and relationship to one another. The operations section and the planning and intelligence section are placed at the front of the EOC. Operations is at the left side next to the direction and control section; planning and intelligence is to the right, just outside the dispatch center.
One person from operations and one from planning will stand on an elevated platform at the large metal-backed community map. One person will add new response needs. The other will position response symbols as appropriate. All symbols used on the status map should be color-coded according to the type of operation. One example would be:
- fire – red
- EMS – blue
- rescue – yellow
- haz mat – purple
- casualty collection points and disaster assistance centers – green.
The legal, technical, and economic advisory and technical support sections are placed behind the operations and planning sections to aid in the decision-making processes. These two sections are separated from each other and the resources and finance sections by movable partitions approximately five feet tall. The partitions allow all EOC staff members to observe the functions of the other sections simply by standing up.
All data coming into the EOC flow through the dispatch center and are logged before the messages are passed to the appropriate section. Whether or not your community dispatches its own police and fire units, it’s important that your EOC have this ability. If you contract your dispatching out to a nearby community, it’s highly likely that, during a disaster, that community will be so overburdened with its own calls that your calls will fall through the cracks. You need personnel trained in the dispatch functions and the discrete frequencies to make the immediate transition to in-house dispatching.
A further consideration is a special feature built into the telephone system which can redirect all 911 calls directly to the dispatch center. The dispatch center should have computer-assisted call processing with printout capability. And there should be a call-waiting system, with a recording that tells callers to remain on the line for the next available dispatcher.
A satellite dish on the roof is important in case all normal means of communication with the outside world fail. You should have trained technicians available to realign the dish should it be shaken or blown from its proper alignment.
When it becomes necessary to activate the EOC, any fire department employee should be able to find the keys and start up the center. To ensure that this can be done, each storage room must have clear instructions, including an EOC table and chair diagram, showing where each piece of equipment is to be placed and how it’s to be plugged in. Several removable plates in the EOC floor will contain telephone, electrical, and computer connections. These plates will be located to serve all sections while keeping the tripping hazard to a minimum.
Each section in the EOC will have posted a wall chart listing its general responsibilities, and on the chair at each staff position in each section will be a manila folder with material that describes specific duties for that person to perform. All of the walls and movable partitions should be made of a tackboardtype material so status boards anch charts can be pinned up anywhere in the room.
The lighting and color scheme in the EOC should be low-stress.
All of this information, if employed in the construction, staffing, and operation of the EOC and accompanied by the necessary training and drills, will ensure the most effective control and allocation of scarce resources during the response and recovery phases of a mass disaster. But like any other evolving system, this is by no means the last word on the subject. It’s presented with the hope it will help you design the ideal EOC for your community.
