A public ceremony was held at Salisbury Township’s public safety building/police headquarters, at 3000 S. Pike Ave., May 9, to dedicate the township’s new emergency operating center.

A capacity crowd of interested citizens enjoyed coffee and bagels as they toured the new emergency center and participated in the ribbon cutting for the facility.

The new center is located in a renovated 2,200-square-foot portion of Salisbury Township’s public safety/police department building that formerly housed the magisterial district court for Salisbury Township and a portion of Allentown.

The emergency operating center will serve as the nerve center for police and township emergency management personnel in the event of a large scale emergency that could affect township residents.

The tour and dedication of the center was held in conjunction with an hour-long “coffee with constituents” opportunity with State Sen. Nick Miller, of the 14th Senatorial District. 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, many of whom 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, were on hand for the ceremony.

“Our biggest costs involved in the renovation,” Salisbury Police Chief Donald Sabo said, “revolved around the state-of-the-art Internet technology and communications. The grant that Sen. Miller helped us procure went a long way in covering those costs.”

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.

All the Lehigh County emergency management office’s employees were at the dedication to support Davis, who they have worked alongside for many years.

“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 has been 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.