Emergency Operations Center gets ribbon-cutting ceremony in Quapaw

QUAPAW, Okla. — The Emergency Operations Center in Quapaw is up and running for the betterment of several area agencies.

The City of Miami, Quapaw Emergency Management and the Ottawa County Sheriff’s office as well as volunteer fire departments will operate out of the 4,000 square-foot facility, which got it’s ribbon-cutting ceremony today.

“The building is the easy part,” Chair of the Quapaw Business Committee Wena Supernaw told NewsTalk KZRG. “It’s all of the technology and the people who are operating inside the building that is much more complicated and difficult to achieve. The way we went about doing that was really in direct collaboration between the Ottawa County 911 Authority, the City of Miami 911 Center and the Quapaw Nation.”

The new center, which has been in use for the last month, has New Generation 911 (NG911) and ESInet cloud services, which provides an exponential increase in data-sharing possibilities. Among the advantages of the new technology, the new platform will enhance call-handling solutions that include text, photos, video, transcriptions, translation and call-prioritization resources.

“That kind of technology gives us the ability to provide faster and better responses to people who are really in distress,” Supernaw said. “They don’t call 911 on their best day. They call 911 when they need help, and we want to be there to provide that help.”

A project that has been in the works for five or six years, seeing it come to fruition is an accomplishment to relish for everyone in the area.

“It’s a shining example of what happens when not only cities and counties, but even tribal nations, come together for a common good,” Supernaw added.