With just two full months left this hurricane season, local officials on Monday cut the ribbon on a new Emergency Operations Center in the Florida Keys.
Despite being a chain of coastal communities vulnerable to hurricanes, Monroe County was one of the last areas in Florida without an EOC, according to Emergency Management Director Shannon Weiner.
The opening of the new facility means emergency management staff and other local public safety personnel will no longer have to evacuate during Category 3 or stronger storms with the rest of the public — like they did in 2017 when Hurricane Irma battered the Keys as a powerful Category 4 storm.
READ MORE: Keys start assessing Irma response — and planning for the next one
Instead, they’ll be able to hunker down in the center that was built over 20 feet above sea level and withstand 220 mile per hour winds.
“It is truly an impressive structure,” said Weiner. “And more importantly, I can say we are no longer the only county in the state of Florida without a standing EOC.”
Emergency managers got right to work as, shortly after the ribbon cutting ceremony, the center hosted its first coordinating call from the new center to discuss Potential Tropical Cyclone 9 and its possible effects on the Keys, according to a county spokesperson.
Monroe was one of 41 Florida counties declared under a state of emergency Monday in advance of the storm.
The 28,321 square-foot building can become “self-sustaining” and support over 100 people for about four days with generators for electric power, wastewater storage, food and drinking water. The new building will also house Monroe County Fire Rescue administrative offices and Sheriff’s Office 911 dispatchers.
The project has been in the works since an initial grant award and design were approved in 2018, according to Weiner. A groundbreaking ceremony was held in October 2022.
“We are here today due to the hard work, dedication and determination of many people,” she said.
Monroe County Sheriff Rick Ramsay said with the new building space, the 911 communications office now has a permanent home with the capacity to expand their services from a 5-station dispatch center to 9 stations.
“We rented space [on a] ground level building, which is flooded in hurricanes, [and] had to evacuate it [because it was] not Cat-5 rated,” Ramsay said. “So our heartbeat of public safety was at times packing up boxes, trying to dispatch from a portable radio as you're going from building A to maybe building C.”
