CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Those in charge of the City's Emergency Operations Center have finally gotten approval for a new emergency generator. The one they had actually broke down during Hurricane Harvey in 2017, forcing everyone to relocate during the storm.
The current generator is said to be about 18 years old and beyond economic service life. The approval for a new one came during Tuesday's City Council meeting almost two years since Hurricane Harvey.
During Harvey, when an emergency generator was needed the most for those in charge of managing the City during, the demand proved to be too much to handle and the generator failed. City staff and other emergency management officials had to relocate to the airport.
The EOC is housed at the Frost Bank building which is located on Leopard Street near downtown.
"What happened in recent years, the power requirements has increased, the size of the EOC has increased, the number of people involved with that," said Jim Davis, Corpus Christi Director of Asset Management. "If you have people there for an extended period of time in an emergency, it turned out the older generator just couldn't accomodate the power requirements."
"It's critically important that this building be adequately equipped with a generator, so in the event of another storm we will be able to operate out of that before, during, and after the storm," Corpus Christi Fire Chief Robert Rocha said.
The Corpus Christi Fire Department headquarters and the City's Development Services Department are also based at the Frost building.
Work to remove the old generator and install the new generator is estimated to be completed by the end of the year and will cost just shy of a half a million dollars.
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