Had the chance to tour the new EOC today - they were hosting an open house. A lot of political types were there - County Executive, Bellingham Mayor, Police Sheriff, Fire Chief. There were probably about 300 people there for the event. Ran into a bunch of people I have emailed but never met face to face. A lot of ham radio people there as communications is crucial to disaster mitigation.
Here are some photos:
Just an unassuming building in some industrial park somewhere...
The event was opened by Jack Louws (pronounced loss) - County Executive.
An interesting side-note. All of the furniture and equipment was donated by BP - they own a large refinery here. The desks, laptops and chairs were last used at their operations center for the Deepwater Horizon well disaster of 2010.
Cake was served. Mmmmmmmm. Cake!
Words to live by! This is displayed at the building's entrance.
Here is a look inside one of the communications trucks. You need to not only communicate from your position, you need to be able to monitor everyone else.
And lastly:
Some of the other vehicles. The white trailer with the City of Bellingham logo on it has food and shelter for 50 people. There were a lot of other pods and buckets for quick deployment to any disaster large or small. The resources we have are really wonderful - the people in the City and County government have been prepping for a long time.
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