Very cool news regarding local preparedness

From the Bellingham Herald:

Bellingham, Whatcom County move toward new emergency center
Whatcom County and the city of Bellingham are taking the first steps toward creating a single emergency operations center inside a Port of Bellingham building near the airport.

The building at 3888 Sound Way was overhauled by federal agencies for use as an emergency operations center during the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, B.C. Now, local governments hope they can take advantage of the federal investment in the 24,000-square-foot space.

The creation of the new emergency center requires city and county councils and port commissioners to approve a 10-year agreement, effective January 2014, that spells out terms of a lease on the building.

That agreement calls for city and county to split an annual lease payment of about $134,000 to the port.

County Executive Jack Louws said the port is a participant in the project and will contribute by charging less than market rate for the building.

Used by the Feds in 2010 so that means that it will already have the communications infrastructure -- antenna mounts, radio rooms, network wiring, phone lines, etc... Even if the Feds took all the computers, radios, phones, etc... with them, the cost of installing new equipment will be a fraction of if the facility had never been prepared. The current facility for the Emergency Communications group is tiny. The new location is good for radio too. Not like we don't have anything to worry about -- volcanoes, earthquakes, land slides, tsunamis, oil spills, refinery accidents, windstorms, ice/snow, bridges. And that is just a short-list.