BOISE, ID. – The Idaho Bureau of Homeland Security didn’t exist in name ten years ago. But in the years after September 11th, this agency has become the nerve center for handling disasters. Scott Ki toured its facility at Gowen Field in Boise.
Robert Feeley: My name’s Robert Feeley and I’m the Public Information Officer for the Idaho Bureau of Homeland Security. Ki: OK, let’s go on this tour now.
Robert Feeley: Downstairs is our emergency operations center. And this was put together with some grant funds that we got from the federal government.
Feeley goes down a narrow hall. He punches in a code to get into the center.
Robert Feeley: This place is really humming when we’re facing an incident. We stood this up twice so far this year. We had some significant flooding in northern Idaho, and then later on in spring we got some pretty significant run-off over in eastern Idaho.
This isn’t just a large conference room. It looks like mission control for a shuttle launch, though on a smaller scale. There’s a bank of monitors that fill up one entire wall. Desks are sectioned off into key areas like logistics and management.
Robert Feeley: If we were to see some kinds of specific intelligence coming through that Idaho was targeted, we’d definitely push that information out through the media and the citizens so that we keep Idahoans informed of what’s going on and help them to be prepared for whatever might happen.
Right now things are pretty quiet. Feeley says there’s no specific threat to Idaho. Though Gowen Field, where the Bureau is housed, and Mountain Home Air Force Base both raised threat levels to Bravo last week with the anniversary of September 11th. That’s means everyone’s I-D gets checked at the gate.
Copyright 2011 Boise State Public Radio