Metro center a step closer

Groundbreaking today; construction to start in spring

The turning of dirt today at Southridge Business Park is only aceremonial groundbreaking but it's the first physical sign of theconstruction that will eventually yield a new $3.6 million MetroEmergency Communications Center for Kanawha County.

The real construction will begin next spring and the building isto be ready for operation by the spring of 2005, Director CarolynCharnock said.

The new center will provide four times as much space as thecurrent center in Charleston City Hall, which Charnock said isappropriate because the agency's duties have quadrupled since itbegan 17 years ago. Metro handles 911 emergency calls for all of theunincorporated portions of Kanawha County and every municipalityexcept for South Charleston and St. Albans, and some communitieswould like the center to handle non-emergency calls as well.

"So we're building a center that will last into the future,"Charnock said.

The building will have a total of 13,500-square-feet, including a4,000-square-foot call center, which is four times the size of thecurrent call center. It will also include a 1,100-square-foot "warroom," or command center, that would be used during times ofemergency, Charnock said. The rest of the center will includeoffices, equipment rooms, bunk areas, showers and a kitchen.

"When other areas of the county are experiencing outages, we haveto be able to sustain," Charnock said.

Kanawha County officials had held up work on the new center in thehope that the state might be able to join in the project. Stateagencies that had considered moving there included the Office ofEmergency Services and the fire marshal's office.

But Charnock said the state and the county were turned down for agrant that might have paid for that consolidation, so the county isgoing ahead on its own. "I would say there's still opportunity forcooperation," she said, although not for the full consolidation,which would have required more land than the county has obtained atSouthridge.

Charnock would at least like the new Metro 911 center to be ableto serve as a backup for the state Office of Emergency Services. Shesaid there is room for the war room to be expanded to accommodatethat.

The structural and technical aspects of the center have beendesigned with homeland security requirements in mind, Charnock said.Without going into detail, she said that compared to the currentcenter, it will be "more durable and more likely to sustain disastersboth natural and manmade."

Other improvements over the current center will include moresophisticated equipment to locate callers and better radiocommunication with field units, Charnock said.

The whole facility will be named the Ned Chilton 911 Center forthe late Charleston Gazette publisher who is credited with gettingCharleston and the county to operate a combined center instead of twoseparate centers. The war room will be named the G. Kemp MeltonEmergency Operations Center after the late mayor of Charleston whowas instrumental in the effort to establish a board separate fromcity government to operate the emergency communications system.

Writer Jim Wallace can be reached at 348-4819 or by e-mail atjimw@dailymail.com.

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