What Really Goes On
Inside the Emergency
Operations Center?
by Dennis Reeves Cooper
You have probably heard of the Key
West Emergency Operations Center, or the
EOC. That’s a big room at the police station
where City leaders gather when a hurricane
is approaching the island— so they can safely
stay in town while they’re telling the rest of
us to leave.
Before the storm arrives, we are told that
our local officials go to the EOC to participate
in conference calls to consult with emergency
management officials at the County and State
level, as well as with officials from Keys Energy,
the Aqueduct Authority, the weather
bureau and other entities to ready plans to
protect residents and visitors, After a serious
storm, they may also use the EOC to
coordinate clean-up efforts.
Or that’s what they say they are doing
while they’re locked up inside the EOC.
The reason we say this is that, last
Sunday— as we were all being told that
Hurricane Ike was going to come barrelling
over the Bahamas, roll down the straits between
Florida and Cuba and come roaring
into Key West as a Category 4 storm— we
thought our readers would like to get a behind-the-scenes look at what
was going on inside the EOC.
So we asked acting City Public
Information Officer Jay Gewin
to set it up for us.
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