Doral residents, for the most part, are aware that the Miami-Dade Fire Rescue headquarters is moving to Doral, to the old Eastern/Oasis building at 9600 NW 36 Street.

An artist's rendering of the completed headquarters.

Few however, recognize the scope of the project, and what a boon it will be not only to local businesses in Doral, but also in terms of further strengthening the area's already formidable clout and stature.

Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Division Manager Gianni Lehmann (left) and Lieutenant Luis R. Fernandez, public relations manager for Miami-Dade Fire Rescue and the Office of Emergency Management, examine the new Miami-Dade Emergency

"95% of all the department's administrative work will be done in this facility," explained Lieutenant Luis R. Fernandez, public relations manager for Miami-Dade Fire Rescue and the Office of Emergency Management (OEM). "This will be the largest facility of its type in the southeastern United States, and the 11th largest in the country."

Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Chief David

The new headquarters will house the Miami-Dade Fire Rescue administrative staff, responsible for the 54 fire-rescue stations in the county, as well as the Office of Emergency Management, which is run by the department.

For Miami-Dade Fire Chief David Paulison, the project is the culmination of years of work and the realization of a twenty-year old dream.

"I worked for North Miami Beach before coming to the county in 1978, and I was so embarrassed by the administration building. I was just a firefighter at that point, but I made myself a promise that if I ever got the opportunity, I would build the department a headquarters they could be proud of."

To call the old headquarters an embarrassment is to be kind. In fact, the previous Miami-Dade Fire-Rescue facility was the old Dade County stockade and not only was it too small, it was a hazardous place to work.

Paulison said, "The building we're currently in is full of radon and asbestos, and the air conditioning was added on and doesn't function well. It has been diagnosed with 'sick building syndrome', which means it doesn't re-circulate air adequately, and in order to fix that and the other problems, we'd have to evacuate it, rent another site, and totally renovate it."

He continued, "By moving, it is actually less expensive than renovating and renting until the work is complete, plus it saves us more money down the road because we can consolidate all our offices instead continuing to rent additional space to accommodate our staff. And it's easier to have everyone all in one place, not just for us, but the public also."

The new facility should be more than capable of accommodating them both now and in the future. Its size is mind-boggling: the gross square footage of the building is 144,00 and the net is 128,000, with 23,000 of that going to emergency management.

While the OEM moved in during the first week of May, full occupancy of the building isn't expected until the end of June or the beginning of July.

The OEM's Emergency Operating Center (EOC) will be amongst the best equipped in the world. The EOC becomes the county's nerve center during natural disasters, and until recently resided in a woefully inadequate facility. Given South Florida's propensity for hurricanes, a top-notch EOC was a major priority.

There will be a huge main room, along with adjacent conference rooms and a press room. The main room is equipped with 15 plasma monitors, which can display any type of data, and should there be a power interruption at the facility, a large, secure generator will be available to service the center.

Other changes to the building, already very solidly built, will make it even more weatherproof. These include state-of-the-art storm shutters and a total renovation of the building's air conditioning and electrical systems.

Paulison also said that by moving the EOC into the headquarters instead of building a facility of its own was a cost-effective move.

Paulison explained, "The cost of moving the center into the building was insignificant compared to constructing one specifically for it, which would have cost in the neighborhood of $15 million."
While there were some initial fears about increased traffic due to the facility, Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Division Manager Gianni Lehmann, who headed the project for the county, was quick to downplay those concerns.

"Before you build or renovate," said Lehmann, "a concurrency study must be done. There will be 350 employees at the facility, but that is only a third of the amount that Eastern and Oasis had here."

Miami-Dade is widely recognized to be one of the top fire-rescue organizations in the world. They currently have a working agreement with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to respond to national and international disasters.

Fernandez said, "We're one of two teams nationwide that responds on behalf of the United States government to handle search and rescue as well as humanitarian coordination and relief. And we've been doing it for some time now--since the 1985 earthquake in Mexico City."

The nice thing about that experience, Fernandez continued, is that it can also be applied right here at home. All that experience gained abroad has been extremely useful in dealing with problems right here at home, whether it's a crash at the airport or responding to a natural disaster like Hurricane Andrew.

The department also prides itself on its stance on gender integration--Miami-Dade currently has 1560 firefighters, 275 of which are women. That's more than any other department nationwide, including the City of New York, which has 14,000 fire fighters, and the 4,000 members of the City of Los Angeles Fire Department.

Paulison, Lehman, and Fernandez all agreed that both the men and women of the fire-rescue department are excited about moving to Doral.

Fernandez said, "We wanted to house our employees safely, we wanted sufficient space, and we wanted to be community friendly, those were our three priorities. All of them were met here."

Lehmann said, "The physical characteristics of the building as well as its historical implications (it was the former Eastern Air Lines headquarters) made it perfect choice."

Paulison concluded, "We needed to be somewhere in the center of the county, and Doral is such a great community. This building was such a tremendous opportunity, we couldn't pass it up. And we want to be partners with the community--we worked with Doral in convincing the INS that Doral was an inappropriate site (the INS building would've been just to the west of the new headquarters). There are frequent demonstrations at facilities of that sort, and though I fully support the right of citizens to protest, it's an important part of our society, it just wouldn't be a good thing next to our headquarters since they could possibly disrupt the EOC."