Redmond Mayor George Endicott joked that the Central Oregon Interagency Dispatch Center’s “temporary” facility in Prineville lasted 20 years.

But the mayor and dozens of others were delighted to welcome the facility back to the Hub, at the state-of-the-art new location near the U.S. Forest Service’s Redmond Air Center.

“This is just one more example of the great cooperation between Redmond and all of the state and federal agencies that keeps our area strong,” Endicott said before a June 1 ribbon-cutting.

Along with the U.S. Forest Service, the dispatch center serves the Oregon Department of Forestry and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and assists with aviation dispatching for the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs. The facility is expected to be busiest during wildfire season but can serve as an operations center during any disaster, from volcanic eruptions to the feared Cascadia earthquake.

Redmond city councilors approved an agreement last year with Griffin Construction to build the 7,000 square foot building for $2.65 million. The city is leasing it to the agencies for 20 years.

The combined dispatch center has been a concept for 20 years, though discussions with Redmond got serious in the past 2½ years, said John Allen, Deschutes National Forest supervisor.

The Prineville facility was only 2,000 square feet, which meant dispatchers worked so close together that conversation could get mixed up to people on the other line, Allen said.

The new dispatch center has separate areas in its initial attack room for four different regions of its 4.5 million-acre service area. Each area has a large map that allows dispatchers to track fires. The dispatchers also have access to large video screens and computers.

It has another area for aerial dispatch, where dispatchers can see the planes they are talking to, something that wasn’t possible in Prineville, Allen said.

The initial attack room is where potentially 600 fires will be dispatched from a year.

“It’s probably one of the largest dispatch centers in the West, outside of California,” Allen said.

The dispatch center also includes a logistics room, where dispatchers help firefighters secure food and hoses, as well as make arrangements for places to stay while fighting fires.

“They would say, ‘We’ll need lunches for 75 firefighters,’ and logistics is going to help them out,’ said Kassidy Kern, acting partnerships and conservation education program manager for the Deschutes National Forest.

The facility has a regular staff of 15, but it has extra work stations so it can expand to 40 to 45 people during larger fires.

Fire season used to start around July 4, but it has been inching closer to Memorial Day, Allen said. The dispatch center, which opened a couple weeks ago, got its first taste of a large fire with the Cougar Butte fire, which burned 170 acres after starting May 26 near Tumalo Falls.

“It went very smoothly,” Allen said of work at the dispatch center. “It was a good test run for us to make sure all the equipment was working.”

Stacy Forson, supervisor with the Ochoco National Forest, told the audience at the ribbon cutting that the complex project required agencies to work together in areas they aren’t used to. But they persisted in developing a facility for the 21st Century and beyond.

“There’s room to grow,” she said. “There’s room to adjust to the things that are coming at us in the future. How often do we get an opportunity to do that together?”

The agencies who worked together on the dispatch center deserve credit, along with taxpayers who paid for it, said Chip Faver, BLM’s Central Oregon field manager.

“What they’re going to get from this is forward thinking, forward acting and a future that is much better than the future they would have had, had we not undertaken this grand adventure,” he said.

— Reporter: 541-548-2186, gfolsom@redmond spokesman.com