A 2,200-square-foot portion of Salisbury Township’s Public Safety/Police Department building at 3000 S. Pike Ave., former home to the magisterial district court for Salisbury Township and a portion of Allentown, has been renovated into an emergency operating center for police and township emergency management personnel.

A public dedication ceremony for the new facility will be held beginning 9:30 a.m. May 9, followed by a ribbon-cutting ceremony and public tour of the facility for the remainder of the day. The 9:30 a.m. start will provide an opportunity for an hour-long “coffee with constituents” opportunity with state Sen. Nick Miller, D-14th.

Miller was instrumental in securing a $150,000 state grant which covered a major portion of the $250,000 cost of the renovation.

Personnel from the township’s public works department were involved in much of the physical labor to convert the space from the magisterial court configuration into the emergency center and contiguous office space.

“Our biggest costs involved in the renovation,” Salisbury Police Chief Donald Sabo said, “revolved around the state-of-the-art Internet technology and communications.”

Sabo was the project leader for the renovation.

“We’ve needed this EOC for many years and we’ve been talking about its design and function for a long time.”

Sabo said he and township Emergency Management Coordinator James Wyatt Davis visited with Allentown, Bethlehem and Lehigh County emergency management managers to see how their facilities were configured and how well they functioned.

“We now have the capability of getting together police, fire, medical personnel and our public works people, together in one place to deal with man-made or natural disaster responses affecting our residents,” Sabo said.

The EOC is equipped with a number of large-screen television monitors that can provide access to local and national news service, weather updates, images from local and regional and on-scene emergency sites.

The EOC has double redundancy access to the Internet and state-of-the-art radio and telemetry equipment. The monitors can be coordinated to all-view, or separate feeds.

One of the large-screen monitors is programmed to bring up emergency contact information for prequalified large-equipment and specialty contractors that can be called on to help with mitigation or recovery in large-scale emergency situations.

“Each local agency would be able to communicate with their field personnel and decisions for emergency response coordinated here in a single location,” Sabo said.

“This single-source of decision-making would allow us to disseminate accurate and timely public information updates during a major local emergency response,” Davis added.

The configuration of the EOC has been designed to also serve as a training center for police department personnel and other emergency response personnel.