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Military More than 19,000 military fire alarm systems located on all military bases on Oahu, except for Hickam Air Force Base, are being monitored by the Navy's new Regional Operation Command and Control Center at Pearl Harbor.
centralizes security
A Pearl Harbor facility monitors
vital Army, Navy and Marine
fire and security systemsBy Gregg K. Kakesako
gkakesako@starbulletin.comThe $900,000 facility, which began operations at the end of February, is the second of its kind in the Navy, according to Michael Jones, fire chief and deputy public safety director for the Hawaii Navy region. The first facility is in San Diego and similar facilities are planned for Japan and Guam.
Jones said the center incorporates fire, security and ambulance services under one roof. From the 3,400-square-foot command center, which is staffed by seven people on every shift 24 hours a day, dispatchers monitor vital fire and security systems on Oahu Army, Marine Corps and Navy facilities. Only the federal fire-fighting force at Hickam isn't a part of this system, Jones said.
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"The efficiency is greater with this new emergency system, and our ability to expand is endless," said Jones, who has been a federal firefighter for the past 28 years.Three large 6-feet-by-8-feet video screens are mounted on one of the center's concrete walls to project vital security and emergency services information stored within the center's data banks. The information may range from the status of the 19,000 fire warning detection devices to maps of island military bases. The screens, which can be split to show a multitude of information, also can be used to monitor national and local television news programs.
Jones said the mapping system eventually will be sophisticated enough not only to pinpoint locations of trouble areas, but also will contain schematic drawings of all the buildings owned by the military.
"We would be able to see the fire hydrants, the electrical cut-offs, the alarm systems and even the types of weapons stored in these buildings," Jones said.
Emergency 911 calls made from any Army, Navy or Marine Corps installation are immediately routed to the Pearl Harbor emergency center. Those made from military housing, however, must be first go through the city's dispatch center before being patched to the Navy command center.
But Jones said the military is now working with Verizon Hawaii to change that procedure so 911 emergency calls will be answered by the Navy's emergency center. Eventually, the center also plans to coordinate emergency calls generated by the Navy's Pacific Missile Range Facility at Barking Sands on Kauai.
More video security cameras are planned to augment the system, which now monitors areas such as the magazine bunkers at Lualualei and West Loch.
The project to dispatch all Department of Defense emergency services from one location was started two years ago, Jones said, and Quanta Systems was the prime contractor. The Maryland-based security company also has installed a smart card access control system for the state of New Jersey, which is the largest statewide smart card access control system in the U.S., covering more than 40 buildings used by 35,000 employees.
Until this year the various Navy installations on Oahu and operations at Pearl Harbor, such as the shipyard, each had their own security systems and command centers. However, with the change of the military's posture following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, "there are greater security demands," Jones said.
The Navy eventually hopes to upgrade the command center's security capabilities to allow military personnel to verify information on anyone trying to enter any base on Oahu simply by running the person's identification card through a special card reader, Jones said.
"Or we will be able to pinpoint the location of anyone using a cell phone within seconds," he added.