Onondaga County to active brand new Emergency Operations Center for Monday’s solar eclipse
TOWN OF SALINA, N.Y. (WSYR-TV) — Onondaga County will activate its brand new Emergency Operations Center for the first time on Monday, April 8, when Central New York will have prime viewing for the Solar Eclipse.
For decades, the Emergency Operations Center was in the basement of the Onondaga County Civic Center in Downtown Syracuse. It opens only for rare emergencies or special events, including the 1998 Labor Day Storm and the 2020 Global Pandemic.
“As lucky as we were to have the E.O.C. that we had, I knew we could do better,” said Emergency Management Commission Dan Wears. “Have a space that was better designed to be a more modern, state-of-the-art emergency operations center.”
That’s what he got in the move to an old Army Reserves facility on Electronics Parkway.
The center includes a desk with names of county parks, hospitals and agencies needed during an emergency, including:
- Syracuse Police
- Syracuse Fire
- Onondaga County Sheriff
- CENTRO
The project cost about $2.5 million, split between federal grants and county taxpayers.
The center will open on Monday to help manage the surge in people and traffic coming into town for the solar eclipse.
