PRINCE EDWARD – County supervisors are going mobile.

The board, at their November meeting, agreed to chip in $65,000 to match $50,000 in grant funds for the purchase of a 80 kW mobile generator, transfer switch, accessory electrical requirements and the cost of installation.

The generator would be for the County's primary Emergency Operations Center (EOC), which will be located at the Coun-ty's Ag building (south of Farmville). Bartlett noted that it is out of the flood plain.

“This courthouse is right now our EOC, but we're in the middle of the flood plain,” he explained. “If we get flooded then we will lose possibly all of our communications because all of that is in the ground floor and also our electrical.”

It may not happen, Bartlett offered, noting that when they built the courthouse they waterproofed up to so many feet and they have dams on the doors.

“Now that may or may not work,” Bartlett said. “If it works, great. If it doesn't, then you would not have an EOC.”

The county administrator reported that they hired an electrical engineer to look at the Ag building and he recommended a generator, which would not run the whole building, but basically the conference room and lights. (It would power the HVAC units.)

“This is a mobile generator so…we'll be on a trailer so we can move it around to wherever we may need it,” Bartlett said. “If it's needed at a firehouse because only part of the county is without power, we can move it there.”

They can move it to the SCOPE building or anywhere the county desires. Still, the necessary wiring would have to be in place to allow the connection to the sites (though devices could be plugged directly into the generator for power). It would be needed to power the HVAC units of large buildings, however.

Supervisors had discussed the use of a middle school (which is the shelter.)

“We looked at that and we're talking several hundreds of thousands of dollars to handle it,” Bartlett said.

Assistant County Administrator Sarah Puckett also explained that they're waiting for the final report from the electrical engi-neer. She noted that she, Bartlett and another staff member had discussed the issue. The middle school, Puckett said, is ideal as a shelter, but that “unfortunately, the way it was built in phases, its electrical system is very complicated and it may take a hun-dred thousand dollars or more to do the transfer switch alone for the middle school and then many hundreds of thousands of dollars to do the generator large enough to carry the load of the middle school.”

The state, Puckett also detailed, has rental contracts that, in the event of an emergency, a locality can ask through a mutual aid request to the state for a generator.

“So strategically when we figure out what we really need at the middle school in terms of a quick connect and the wiring-if we do that installation at minimum, then we just have to be smart enough in the event of an emergency to be at the front of the line to ask for the generator for the middle school in the event that we anticipate a power outage that would, let's say, lead to the catastrophic level that would require needs of shelter-either…winter or summer,” Puckett said.

That may be a better investment for them, she suggested.

“Shelters is a conversation that needs to be had in the county because it's a serious investment in resources to prepare a fa-cility to truly be a shelter,” Puckett said. “And we may find that the middle school geographically may not be the best decision.”

It may be better to go to each region of the county and try and find a facility, she suggested.