Excerpts from rrstar.com:
U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth on Saturday visited Rockford Fire Department headquarters where a $1 million Congressional earmark she backed will help pay to establish a permanent emergency operations center. Funding for the emergency operations center was chosen from among more than 600 applicants vying for a portion of $88 million.
Money for the emergency operations center is expected to arrive in Rockford within months.
For now, computers, keyboards and monitors line the outskirts of a room at Rockford Fire Department headquarters that is meant to be a classroom. Cables, communications equipment and more computers can be retrieved from storage cabinets and carted into the space when an emergency arises.
It takes 30-45 minutes to turn the classroom into an operations center that augments the city’s 911 Center — where call takers routinely field 27 emergency calls an hour and took about 240,000 calls for service in 2022. The emergency operations center can take some of the load of directing responses off the 911 Center during a catastrophic or large-scale emergency.
During previous emergencies, Rockford staff have manned a Winnebago County emergency response center located at the Criminal Justice Center.
Plans are to convert training areas and opens space on the first floor of Rockford Fire Department headquarters, 204 S. First St., into the dedicated city of Rockford emergency operations center.
