Communications, 911 call center opens at port in Port Allen

• By EMILY HOLDEN
• Special to The Advocate
• Published: Nov 8, 2008 - Page: 3B - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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PORT ALLEN — West Baton Rouge Parish officials opened the first phase of a new emergency communications and 911 call center on Thursday at the Port of Greater Baton Rouge.

“We’ve been working for the last several years to centralize our communications,” said Deano Moran, the parish’s homeland security director.

Moran said plans for the communications center began nearly a decade ago as a joint venture between the Port of Greater Baton Rouge and West Baton Rouge Parish government.

Larry Johnson, port commissioner, said Baton Rouge is the southernmost port not affected by Hurricane Katrina.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security began funding grants for a communications center after realizing how instrumental the port had been in coordinating activities in the aftermath of the 2005 hurricane, he said.

The $3 million to $4 million it cost to renovate a building and equip the center came from a combination of parish, federal and state funds, said Anthony Summers, the parish’s assistant director of homeland security.

The communication center occupies a building once used by the West Baton Rouge Chamber of Commerce, which has since moved to the Addis Community Center. The 911 center was located previously in the old parish courthouse.

The first floor of the new building houses the 911 center and a parish Emergency Operations Center. Plans for the second and third floors include a marine command center and a situation room. These additions have not yet been constructed.

Summers said the 911 center receives about 20,000 calls a year. He said the center’s state-of-the-art equipment allows dispatchers to handle all calls through a computer, rather than a telephone.

The database holds a list of about 150 contacts, including fire and police departments, and wrecker and alarm companies in West Baton Rouge parish and surrounding areas.

At the old center, dispatchers used a paper filing system to look up these telephone numbers and manually transfer calls.

The system will be updated within the next few months to direct dispatchers to the proper first responders to call depending on the location and nature of the emergency.

Laurine Brown, a 911 dispatcher, said the new center is much more spacious, and the new equipment speeds response times.