APCO conference attendees will have an opportunity to tour the Cypress Creek EMS Comm Center. (Photo Courtesy CCEMS)

Editor’s note: Attending this year’s APCO conference in Houston? On Monday, Aug. 2 at 2 p.m., attendees will have the opportunity to tour the Cypress Creek EMS Comm Center. Below is a sneak peak of what this state-of-the-art comm center has to offer. Read a complete profile in August PSC.

A cutting-edge communications facility serving the suburbs north of Houston, Cypress Creek EMS (CCEMS) Communications Center has grown with Harris County. The agency was founded in 1975 to provide ambulance service along FM 1960, then a two-lane, farm-to-market road snaking through the woods 20 miles northwest of Houston. Today, those piney woods are largely gone, replaced by a web of wide roads, shopping centers and houses. The Creek, as the agency is known in public safety circles, covers 250-square miles of northern Harris County.

For years, CCEMS ambulances were dispatched from a small, four-console facility. But the agency, which now serves more than 500,000 people, needed more dispatch space and updated IT capabilities. Early last year, the agency’s new, three-building facility opened. Dispatch positions have increased nearly threefold.

The 8,000 square foot dispatch center has $1.4 million worth of furniture and new equipment, including an updated Zetron 4000 dispatch system. It has a full kitchen, a bunkroom, lockers and showers. And the center’s growth continues: According to Toivo Sari, CCEMS information systems manager, the system is already being upgraded to accommodate more radio systems being used in the area.

“We are very, very happy with the new buildings and equipment,” says Tammy Parker, comm center manager. “[The expansion] has also resulted in more positions. We went from five dispatchers to eight per shift, and we will be hiring more.”

CCEMS is a secondary PSAP with expanded responsibilities. In addition to handling communications for 11 fire departments and four EMS agencies, it handles calls for the county fire marshal’s office, its hazmat team and the Bluebonnet Critical Incident Stress Management team. Dispatchers handled more than 51,000 incidents in 2009.

The new facility, which cost $7.2 million for three buildings, was funded by a standard construction loan. The process began in 2006 after the CCEMS board hired Houston-based Joiner Partnership architects to design three buildings: a dispatch center, a multipurpose community education and administration building, and a new ambulance station.

Originally, construction was ahead of schedule, says Sari. But in 2008, Hurricane Ike devastated southeast Texas. Fortunately, the unfinished comm center sustained little damage, but in the face of so much wind-related damage to homes and the area’s power grid, the move-in date was pushed back four months.

In the meantime, CCEMS dispatch personnel didn’t miss a beat. “Our old center never went offline during the storm or after it,” Sari says. “We were fortunate that we were able to maintain communications not only in our own district, but we also assisted other agencies who did lose power.”

The delay gave dispatchers more practice time with the updated CAD. By the time the transition occurred in March 2009, the move was “seamless,” Parker says.

In addition to the comm center, the new Charles R. Hooks Education Center, a 16,000-square foot education and administrative facility named in honor of a late CCEMS paramedic, also sits on the six-acre campus. It hosts year-round initial and continuing education programs for rescuers and the general public. The education center has adjustable, multipurpose rooms, a stage, AV and smartboards. Fifteen administrative personnel inhabit the remainder of the building. The third building is a new ambulance station for CCEMS’s Medic 59, one of 10 Cypress Creek ambulance posts.

About the Author
Courtney McCain has worked as a paramedic and an air medical dispatcher in Kansas and Texas. She is now a writer focusing on public safety. Contact her at kemsnews@everestkc.net.