The County of Hawaiʻi held a blessing and dedication ceremony for the new Emergency Call Center in Hilo yesterday.
The new 17,127-square-foot facility on Mohouli Street will operate as a unified call center, housing dispatch for the Police and Fire departments. In addition to improving emergency response capabilities, the new Call Center provides room for growth for both agencies.
The blessing coincides with National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week, which runs April 13-19.
Construction of the $31 million state-of-the-art facility began in late 2021 and was built by Hensel Phelps Construction. Designed to withstand earthquakes and hurricanes, the emergency call center features a conference room, briefing room, training room, cafeteria, workout room, locker room, bathrooms, and showers.
The ceremony included the reading of a proclamation from Mayor Alameda, a certificate from Hawai‘i County Council Chairman Dr. Holeka Goro Inaba, and the presentation of a plaque from Laura Mallery-Sayre of the Daniel R. Sayre Memorial Foundation, which donated gym equipment for the facility. Speakers included Chief Moszkowicz and Chief Todd. Chaplain Renee Godoy, who heads the volunteer Police Chaplain program, conducted the invocation and blessing.
Currently, there are seven police communications officers and two fire communications officers working per shift. The new facility was built with an eye toward future growth and can comfortably fit 13 police communications consoles and nine fire communications consoles.
Plans for the new facility have been in the works since the early 2000s. In a fortuitous turn of events, police and fire dispatch personnel were able to provide input into the final design of the facility’s layout. Original plans called for separate walled-off areas for police and fire personnel. However, since May 2023, the Police Department has provided room in their dispatch center for fire communications staff, who had previously been housed in the Central Fire Station on Kino‘ole Street in Hilo.
The current dispatch facilities at police headquarters will be repurposed as a back-up dispatch facility.
Photo credit: Hawaiʻi County Mayor’s Office