County officials showcase emergency operations center to the public

After 11 months of construction, the Cape Girardeau County Emergency Operations Center (EOC) is finally complete.

County officials invited the community to celebrate the occasion with an open house Thursday, Oct. 3, at the EOC’s new home, 3555 Veterans Memorial Drive in Cape Girardeau.

The EOC was built to store equipment and provide a central location for emergency services to oversee relief efforts during disasters.

“We hope today is the greatest number of people that are ever here,” Presiding Commissioner Clint Tracy said. “We need to have this building in case there is an emergency, but we pray we never have to use it.”

DILLE POLLARD Architecture of Cape Girardeau designed the 14,000-square foot facility, while Sides Construction of Jackson built it. The EOC cost some $4.82 million of American Rescue Plan Act funding to construct.

“We’ve done quite a few FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) buildings, but primarily for schools, so this is the first one that’s had a little bit different function,” project architect Kristen Uhrhan with DILLE POLLARD Architecture said.

The building’s hub is a command center of sorts, a large meeting room for emergency services to congregate and delegate relief efforts in person.

“We’ve got six screens in there that can share six different (views) at one time to share information that is vital to the recovery and the mitigation of a disaster while they’re here,” Cape Girardeau County emergency management director Sam Herndon said.

Also included inside are offices for Herndon and his deputy, Charles Wilson, a smaller conference room and a communications center to monitor police and fire department reports.

“That’s also the room where we can sound all the sirens off for the county during severe weather,” Herndon added.

A vehicle and equipment bay takes up the majority of the interior. Several trailers and generators stored inside would provide resources and power in the event of a catastrophe.

“We house them in there, keep them clean, keep them maintained, which is great because before this facility, four of those trailers sat outside,” Herndon said.

Uhrhan said designing the doors to the vehicle bay was among the most challenging parts of the process. Built to FEMA P-361 standards, the EOC can withstand a direct hit from a powerful tornado with wind speeds above 200 miles per hour. However, unlike buildings designed to be shelters, this one needed to have functional points of egress for rapid deployment of emergency resources. As such, it has plenty of parking as well.

During his short speech preceding the open house, Herndon thanked the county commissioners, architects, builders and previous emergency management directors for their dedication in seeing the project through to completion. Tracy and DILLE POLLARD senior project manager Michael Pollard also spoke at the event, which culminated in a ribbon-cutting.

The county’s emergency management offices were located in the basement of the county administration building in Jackson before moving to the EOC.