When emergencies happen, Eagle County’s operations center is ready for work

From wildfires to floods to pandemics, emergencies take many forms, but the responses to those emergencies are similar in many ways.

Eagle County Director of Emergency Management Birch Barron this week gave the Eagle County Board of Commissioners a quick course in what goes on at the county’s Emergency Operations Center, and what their role is in emergencies.

The center is tucked away in the basement of the county administration building. The windowless room is tied into the county’s communications systems and is filled with equipment to give people up-to-the-minute information from the scenes of an incident and incident command centers.

In many cases, that involves communicating between different first responders and, sometimes, different dispatch centers.

Those resources often function well on their own. Where the operations center comes into play is when response and recovery needs to go beyond the scope of established incident command.

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The emergency operations center will ensure coordination and communications so that all people are working together.

A bigger-picture look

Barron told the commissioners that the emergency operations center takes a bigger-picture view of incidents, which includes looking at “community lifelines.” According to a handout Barron provided, those lifelines include safety and security, food, water and shelter, energy, power and fuel, transportation, communications and natural resources.

The economy is a different kind of lifeline in this area, Barron said.

Those lifelines are broken down into traffic light-style areas of green, yellow and red.

For instance, when an earthquake rattled Gypsum in 2019, all the lifeline indicators were green.

But the lifeline indicators have different agencies assigned to different tasks.

Barron noted that, for example, Core Transit could be used to get people out of Glenwood Canyon in case of an emergency that required motorists to leave their cars in the canyon.

Most of the time, first responders know their roles. But where elected officials and other policy makers are needed is in calling in help from state and federal agencies when more help is needed.

Elected officials are also essential in providing consistent messages to the public.

Eagle County Manager Jeff Shroll is the point person for virtually all policy decisions. But, he noted, it’s elected officials who get most of the phone calls in emergency situations. That’s why it’s important that they’re provided with consistent, accurate information.

The role of policymakers

Policymakers also provide legal authority for additional responses.

The county manager is authorized to issue a disaster declaration within the first seven days of a big incident. That can trigger assistance from state and federal authorities. But that federal assistance seems to be in question these days. Barron noted that there’s talk now of quadrupling the current thresholds for federal assistance, or, perhaps, doing away with presidential disaster declarations.

But no matter who ends up paying for what services, Barron added that control in disasters always begins and ends with local agencies. And, while the goal is to rebuild after a disaster, that’s a goal that isn’t always met.

“We’re very good at keeping people alive,” Barron said, adding that services extend to temporary shelter and other needs. But, he added, the goal should be keeping businesses and families in the county, not simply replacing a business or family that’s been forced to move.

While commissioners Matt Scherr and Jeanne McQueeney have been through emergencies before, from wildfires to pandemics, this was Commissioner Tom Boyd’s first time through the exercise.

Going through the material, Boyd said the first thing that struck him was the principle of empathy.

“People are going to want to be heard,” Boyd said, adding that during disasters is “a time when leaders listen.”