County’s first permanent emergency operations center readying for El Niño

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San Benito County supervisors and county employees, including sheriff’s deputies, attended the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the county’s first permanent Emergency Operations Center (EOC) on Nov. 6 at the office of the sheriff’s building, 2303 Technology Parkway, in preparation for expected El Niño storms and other emergencies.

Supervisor Mindy Sotelo began by recognizing the potential of converting an existing resource—the sheriff’s conference room—into the county’s first permanent EOC. She said the room represents the county’s commitment to “preparedness, public safety, and protecting the people who call San Benito County home.”

“When we think about emergency preparedness we often think about what happens when disaster strikes,” Sotello said. “The truth is that some of the most important work takes place long before an emergency. It happens during the countless hours of preparations that most residents will never see.”

The previous EOC was more of a concept than a functional emergency center. The new facility brings together county, city, state and federal services, according to County Executive Officer Esperanza Colio Warren.

“I believe in being prepared,” she said, regarding her push to establish the permanent EOC. “I started asking questions and when I didn’t get any responses, I thought we needed to do something about it. The board has been very supportive.” 

The three county employees who were charged with heading up EOC during emergencies have all resigned and Colio Warren said it was up to her to move forward and establish an operations center that could be immediately activated when needed.

She told BenitoLink that a full-time deputy director of emergency services has not been hired yet, and a review of the first round of applications will begin this week. Meanwhile, she said she will continue to fill the role of director of emergency services, and Sheriff Eric Taylor will act as incident commander and public information officer. 

She also said Santa Clara County’s Office of Emergency Services will begin training San Benito County personnel on Nov. 18.

As Colio Warren showed BenitoLink the new center, she said after declaring an emergency, which she is authorized to do, the EOC will be activated and people who have been trained will report to their various stations. 

“We’ll have stations for public works to manage road closures in flood areas,” she said. “There’ll be another station for the sheriff’s department to communicate with its officers in the field.”

She said one station will coordinate efforts to help the homeless who may need to be evacuated. 

“Another table will handle all the financing paperwork, purchases we need to make,” she said, “and I’ll be here authorizing these expenses. All the information these groups create goes directly to the sheriff, who works with me to review the information.”  

Colio Warren said the cost for the center was kept lower because all the furnishings, including several large wall-mounted monitors, were brought in from other departments. The only items purchased for the center were desktop monitors and keyboards for $5,000. An additional cost of $8,000 went toward connecting all the stations, which are adapted to work with personal laptops that each county employee already has. 

She also said the center would be using Starlink to communicate with those in the field, if cell service is disrupted. She declined to disclose the cost for that service.

The cost, according to the company’s published pricing for Hollister, would depend on the level of service and equipment. Plans range from $55 per month for 50 gigabytes of priority data to $530 per month for 2 terabytes. Business hardware is purchased separately. Starlink reporting equipment costs starts at $349.

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