LaSalle County EMA gets $22,000 grant, highlights STARLINK command-bus capabilities

The LaSalle County Emergency Management Agency (EMA) told the Public Safety board that the county received an additional $22,000 grant and is moving forward with purchases under an approved spend plan.

“The grant agreement, with an additional $22,000 coming to the county,” the EMA representative said, noting the agreement has been signed and funds will be advanced based on a spend plan.

The EMA representative described operational benefits from a mobile operations and communications command bus the county received earlier this year and on which the agency has installed STARLINK satellite internet. He said the unit can be moved to the south side of the county building and, if both primary and secondary county internet fail, provide connectivity to at least one building.

“With the STARLINK capability, we have found … I can actually take and pull that unit around to the south side of my building and plug it into my building and still have Internet in my building based off of Starlink,” the EMA representative said.

The representative also said the command bus supports a landline-style 10-digit phone number and that 911 dispatch can transfer calls to a dedicated 911 phone inside the bus; transferred calls would remain recorded.

“We can put a landline telephone inside … the command bus as well,” he said. “If we’re in that, you would be able to get an Ottawa number landline to come up on their caller ID. … 911 downstairs is able to transfer calls to a dedicated 911 phone inside the bus as well. It still remains recorded.”

The county deployed the bus for a 24-hour exercise with an urban search-and-rescue team from the Chicago/Cook County area and the county’s swift-water team in Oglesby; EMA said the bus will support operations for a portion of the exercise and that the marathon scheduled for Saturday will be the first real-world event to use the bus for event management.

At a recent nuclear preparedness conference, the EMA representative reviewed emerging small modular reactor (SMR) technology and discussed how SMRs would change emergency-planning footprints compared with traditional plants. He said SMRs have a much smaller threat zone but predicted wider adoption could follow as technology and applications expand.

The Public Safety board voted to accept the EMA report by voice vote. The EMA representative also reported a parking-lot bid returning about $22,000 against a roughly $46,000 budget, creating an approximate $20,000 savings on that project.