Delray seeks new operations center to withstand storms

DELRAY BEACH — Roof leaks, communications failures and power outages beleaguered Delray’s emergency operations center during Hurricane Irma.

Delray Beach city officials worried a stronger storm could have left first responders with no way to communicate with those in need of help. Now, city officials are looking to build a new facility to manage emergencies during disasters.

“You can’t run a town in an emergency if you can’t have a facility that can withstand that possibility,” said Mayor Cary Glickstein. “We just owe it to the citizens to have a safe emergency operations center.”

The commission has agreed to conduct a $200,000 study to assess city buildings and find the best place to build a new operations center.

In the days preceding the storm, city staff prepped a makeshift operations center in the Delray Fire Department headquarters on Atlantic Avenue to manage emergency response, communicate with county and state officials and monitor the storm, said interim city manager Neal de Jesus.

Staff added extra phone and internet lines and prepared the building to house nearly 100 people including police, fire-rescue and city workers, he said.

But the hurricane’s outer bands wreaked havoc on the city’s emergency operations without a direct hit from the storm. The first sign of trouble started when communications lines with field offices went down before the storm even began, de Jesus said.

IT support staff managed to solve the problem only to lose phone and internet lines for several hours when the storm hit, leaving emergency officials to talk over radio, he said.

Inside the fire station, rainwater dripped into offices where staff inflated air mattresses and slept on floors between 12-hour shifts, de Jesus said.

“We were just using buckets to catch the water,” he said.

Glisckstein said there was insulation coming out of the roof and onto where people were sleeping. “It just was deplorable conditions,” he said.

Power went out at both the fire and the police station and both fell back on generators, de Jesus said.

But the generator went out at the police station, forcing dispatchers to reroute 911 calls to Boca Raton while workers fixed the generator, said Dani Moschella, spokeswoman for Delray Beach Police.

Even with the challenges, police, fire-rescue and city workers still accomplished feats of heroism.

Delray Beach Police used their massive, mine-resistant vehicle in winds of more than 50 mph to save a Delray resident whose roof collapsed, while fire-rescue provided medical treatment to a 1-year-old who couldn’t breathe, de Jesus said.

At the storm’s peak, more than 140 power lines went down across the city, de Jesus said.

After the hurricane, workers played whack-amole with the city’s sewer system, moving 30 generators around the city to power lift stations that prevent raw sewage from backing up and spilling out onto the streets and into homes.

“Staff did a phenomenal job serving the lift stations,” he said.

Early city estimates put the storm’s damage at $10 million but may go as high as $12 million, de Jesus said.

In the aftermath, Mayor Cary Glickstein said if there is one legacy he wants to leave behind in the city: a new emergency operations center that’s able to withstand a Category 5 hurricane.

The most likely site would be at the Lakeview Golf Club west of Interstate 95, de Jesus said.

The commission-approved study will take place next year, but it will take until at least 2019 for an emergency operations center to be built, Glickstein said.

In the meantime, the city is spending $1.1 million to fortify facilities at the Delray Beach Golf Club with hurricane-impact windows and a reinforced roof. The club likely will double as the emergency operations center until a new one is built, de Jesus said.