West Point has New Emergency Operations Center

WEST POINT, Miss. (WCBI) – Fire officials in West Point say they now have one of the best emergency operations in Mississippi.

Thanks to a grant from the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency, Fire Station #1 in West Point now has a centralized emergency command center.

“We can talk to every county in the state on this telephone plus the national weather service in Memphis and Jackson, the Highway Patrol. It’s a really handy operation,” says West Point Fire Dept Chief Johnny Littlefield.

Each station in the operations center has hand-held radios programmed to contact fire departments statewide including those in Columbus and Starkville.

“If we have a sustained incident, there’s a place here for every department head in the city, plus the sheriff’s department and the Supervisors,” says Littlefield.

Chief Littlefield hopes they never have to use the emergency operations center, but if they do, they’ll be ready.

“We train pretty regularly on this now because it’s new but we train four days a week, every week,” says Littlefield.

The Chief proudly notes that in his 38 years as a fireman, he’s never seen a better command center than the one they have now in Clay County.

The Chief says though the center is operational, they’re still tweaking the system as needed.