In fact, the 48-foot-long white truck with “Greenbrier County” and “Homeland Security” emblazoned on its sides has already seen action this summer during The Greenbrier Classic concerts attended by thousands of people at the State Fairgrounds amphitheater earlier this month.
According to Al Whitaker, director of the Greenbrier County Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency, large-scale events like the Greenbrier Classic and the State Fair can swell the county’s population by more than 25 percent, putting added pressure on the capacity of the 911 Center. Coupled with the region’s inevitable weather-related emergencies, those special events prompted Whitaker to pursue funding for a mobile unit that can extend Homeland Security’s communications capacity.
While conducting a media tour of the new mobile center following Wednesday evening’s Greenbrier County Commission meeting, Whitaker said the original specs he worked out for such a vehicle totaled $700,000. But those grand plans had to be scaled back when the only funding available turned out to be a $205,000 Homeland Security grant.
“When I got the $205,000, I put out some feelers and found this (truck), and it does the job,” Whitaker said, surveying the vehicle’s well appointed interior, which includes everything from multiple workstations for dispatchers to a compact kitchenette, complete with microwave oven, counter-height refrigerator and coffeepot.
Located just past the kitchenette, the rear of the truck contains four sleek workstations, each of which is equipped with a laptop that has the same capability as the larger computers located in the 911 Center. Additional laptops are on hand to enable the dispatchers to maintain logs.
Toward the front of the truck, beyond a corridor edged with storage compartments designed to hold a variety of supplies and equipment, is what Whitaker terms the “situational awareness room.” That room contains a narrow conference table that is wired to accommodate additional workstations, when needed.
To one side of the table, an upholstered banquette stretches the length of the compartment underneath a white board that doubles as a projection screen, while the facing wall is dominated by a sizable flat-screen TV, with a smaller television monitor tucked into a corner.
Explaining the television setup, Whitaker said the screens allow those manning the emergency operations center to monitor video feeds showing traffic on nearby roadways and radar images of weather patterns. Informational videos can also be shown on the TVs.
Yet another space in the truck contains chargers filled with handheld radio units, ready to grab and go, as well as wiring for two more workstations.
The truck is also equipped with a pair of air conditioning units — a necessity not only for human comfort, but also to maintain temperatures for optimal operation of the communications equipment onboard — and an exterior awning that extends from one side of the vehicle.
The operations center can be powered either by its own 20-kilowatt generator or by plugging it into an outside electrical source.
At the present time, only Whitaker and Rodney Evans, the 911 Center’s radio technician, are authorized to drive the truck.
Whitaker said the next planned use of the mobile unit will be at next month’s State Fair of West Virginia.
“We’ll set up at the fair as a communications center,” he said. “All emergency communications from the fairgrounds and the free parking lot will come (to the mobile unit), and we’ll have a dispatcher on board.”
The operations center will be situated on the fairgrounds, near the entrance to the new pedestrian tunnel that runs under U.S. 219, connecting the fairgrounds to the parking lot.
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