Sheriff Announces Plans for Emergency
Operations Center in Old Malibu Station
• Sale of Location Was Being
Considered
Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca has
made public his plans to announce a proposal to build a
permanent, state-of-the-art emergency operations center
and training campus in the old Malibu Sheriff’s Station
at this week’s Malibu Town Hall.
Baca indicates that the proposed EOC
“will give responders an enhanced coordination
center for emergency response and will improve their
ability to serve the community.”
The training campus proposed for the
station shuttered in 1991 will be for all public response
agencies, according to Baca. The site has a radio relay tower,
helipad and fuel pumps in place.
The Malibu location is deemed especially
suitable because “it will give students the ability to
see the area they will be asked to respond to in an
emergency.”
Lack of familiarity with Malibu by
responders from other areas is often cited as a problem
during local emergencies.
The sheriff adds the EOC “will
provide CERT training, animal evacuation training, preparedness
and mitigation training, and a place to develop, review and
test community disaster plans.”
Baca had indicated his strong interest in
utilizing the station site back in February, when he told the
Malibu Surfside News that making other plans for the facility
would be a “mistake.”
County Supervisor Zev
Yaroslavsky had been negotiating with Santa
Monica College to sell part of the location for a satellite
campus and scoffed at Baca’s then interest in a
reopened substation.
Plans for a full-fledged EOC in the
catastrophe-prone Malibu area might prove tougher to
oppose.
In earlier comments, Baca said,
“Residents of Malibu have told me they want an emergency
[facility in the community and] this is about public
safety first.”
The town hall on emergency preparedness
will take place Wednesday at 7 p.m. at the Malibu
Performing Arts Center.
