L.A. Disaster Officials Get Some New Wheels

With ambitious plans for a “command-and-control” helicopter still in a holding pattern, Los Angeles officials are about to unveil two less exotic vehicles to help them respond to earthquakes and other emergencies--a pair of huge recreational vehicles converted to provide work space close to a disaster site for as many as 31 city officials.

The 36-foot-long roving “war rooms” basically re-create on wheels the emergency operations center buried four floors below City Hall, where department heads now gather to coordinate relief efforts. Dominated by rows of high-tech workstations, the vehicles are designed to be connected at the scene to two trailers, one carrying a power generator and the other filled with communications equipment.

“No other government agency has what we’re putting together,” Los Angeles Police Cmdr. George A. Morrison said of the $1.5-million cluster of RVs and trailers known as the Mobile Alternate Emergency Operations Center.

Nevertheless, for Morrison and other members of the city’s Emergency Operations Board, the ultimate dream remains a one-of-a-kind helicopter that would enable top managers from various departments to hover over the wreckage of the Big One for as long as three hours.

No Bids on Copter

Officials announced plans for the airborne control center two years ago, envisioning a craft housing six computerized workstations hooked into video cameras, infrared heat sensors and night-vision equipment. If a bridge were destroyed, for instance, transportation and public works officials would be able to decide immediately if it could be repaired and select alternate evacuation routes.

After the plan won City Council approval and a 136-page bid request was sent to manufacturers, the expectation was that the helicopter would take flight by this summer.

But there was one problem--the city’s cost estimate of $4.5 million was so unrealistic that no one would bid on the project.

Now city officials are getting ready to propose the copter again to the council’s Finance and Revenue Committee, this time with an estimated price tag of $8 million to $10 million.

“We have come into this on a phase basis,” Morrison said. “The helicopter is the last phase. . . . I’m pretty optimistic we can come in close to the $8 million.”

For the moment, however, emergency response teams will have to rely on the custom-fitted RVs if the underground City Hall center is disabled or if they decide that a command post should be established near the spot most heavily damaged by an earthquake, brush fire, winter storm, toxic leak or other disaster.

Final Touches

The General Services Department is putting final touches on the 13-foot-high vehicles in a caged area of the fortified C. Erwin Piper Technical Center, where the police air support division and its 15 helicopters are based.

One of the RVs has 15 work stations, the other 16. At each station, a worker will face a control panel that can accommodate a lap-top computer and tune in 18 radio frequencies or the city’s microwave TV system, which can transmit pictures of the damage taken by video cameras aboard police or fire helicopters.

“It’s not that this is going to sit around and wait for the San Andreas Fault to go,” Morrison said. “We will probably use it for training purposes on minor emergencies . . . just to test it, give it a shakedown cruise.”