Published: February 25, 2008 12:05 am            

IEOC to shut

Johnstown’s high-tech Integrated Emergency Operations Center, unveiled just a few years ago, will close because of funding problems.

But officials are laying the groundwork for a new city-county emergency facility that would take the IEOC’s place.

“We’re exploring the possibilities, because we’ve realized the value of having a joint emergency-operations center,” said P.J. Stevens, Cambria County’s president commissioner.

When it opened in the former Reliant Energy complex along Broad Street, the IEOC was hailed as a major step forward for local emergency management.

The center was made possible by federal money, with the U.S. Department of Defense using the project as a research and development initiative.

“What we helped (the Defense Department) do is really look at their homeland-defense mission,” said David Davis of Johnstown-based MountainTop Technologies Inc., another partner in the IEOC.

But Davis said the Defense Department’s role is winding down, with the program having been deemed a success.

“The goals and objectives that we had for the program have been met,” he said.

MountainTop is “working on reassigning” its employees that had been involved with the initiative, Davis said.

With governmental support ending, six city IEOC jobs that had been completely supported by federal cash will be eliminated, City Manager Curt Davis said.

And the IEOC cannot continue in its current location, Curt Davis said, because $180,000 in annual rent also has been paid by the federal government.

“There’s no way the city could afford to pick that up,” he said.

City officials are talking with county leaders, who previously had transferred their emergency-operations staff to the IEOC.

The idea is to continue that partnership, likely by creating a new center in downtown Johnstown’s former Glosser Bros. building, which is county owned.

“We’re trying to work out the details on it,” Curt Davis said, adding that the IEOC is expected to shut by the end of April.

The city manager said the federal government has agreed to leave behind IEOC equipment valued at a half-million dollars. So officials essentially could transfer the IEOC’s capabilities to a new location.

“What we’re going to do is replicate what we did down there in another building,” city fire Chief Anthony Kovacic said.

Kovacic said his department often used the IEOC’s capabilities, including detailed mapping information the center provided.

He recalled an incident in which firefighters were investigating high levels of a flammable gas downtown, possibly in the sewer system.

“I wanted to know (the location of) every manhole in four blocks,” Kovacic said. “Within seconds, that information was relayed to me.”

That type of service likely would continue under the new city-county venture, Kovacic said.

County officials also see the proposed downtown facility as a continued base for their emergency operations center. It also would serve as a backup for county 911 services in the event that problems arise in Ebensburg, Stevens said.

“You have to plan for every contingency,” he said.

        

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