By Conrad Dudderar
Senior Staff Writer
Upgrades to the City of Yukon’s Emergency Operations Center are moving forward and should be finished by the end of 2020.
The Yukon City Council recently approved spending about $650,000 as part of an Emergency Operations Center (EOC) bunker project at the Yukon Police Department, 100 S Ranchwood.
The expenditures were approved during the council’s June 16 meeting.
Some $585,224.23 will be paid to Presidio Networked Solutions of Oklahoma City for technology software, hardware and network services.
These costs are included in the budget for the City of Yukon’s 2020 revenue note.
Another $63,976.50 will go to Total Radio/Bearcom of Broken Arrow to build and install an 80-foot radio tower. This project is under a state contract.
Yukon Police Chief John Corn said the EOC bunker project recently got underway.
A concrete-reinforced building is being constructed along with a generator on north side of the police station.
“The bunker is going to end up being about 15 (foot) by 30,” Corn said. “It will be split block around a steel frame, then back-poured with concrete.”
“It will have a concrete deck on top of it.
“It will be a real nice facility, climate controlled.”
The new EOC bunker will be able to hold eight full-size IT (information technology) racks for servers, recorders, radio equipment, and a phone system voice-log recorder.
This is being done to ensure Yukon’s IT network stays intact in case of a major event like a tornado – so the EOC remains operational.
Chief Corn likes the idea of placing the City’s IT infrastructure in this new secure, stand-alone facility.
“We can move our radio communications in there for just the EOC – take them all off the desktops,” he said. “They’ll be operated on a Motorola device that looks real similar to a voice-over IP (Internet Protocol) phone. But, instead of being on small antennas on the roof, they’ll be on a full-size antennas, just like communications operates on.
“Everything will be run underground through conduit and it will have its own generator-backup system separate from the department’s generator.”
All this technology is now housed inside an unsecured room at the police station.
“But it is not tornado-proof,” Corn said. “If we were to take a hit, we would all be safe in the EOC, but all of our technology would be tossed down the road. So, we thought we need to have it (in the bunker) so it doesn’t get blown away.”
