By ANN PIERCEALL
Herald-Whig Staff Writer

HANNIBAL, Mo. -- The walls are up, the roof is on and in another six weeks or so the new $2.2 million Marion County Emergency Services 911 Communications Center will be "substantially complete."

However, 911 officials say the agency's move from its long time home at the Hannibal Police Department to the new location off of U.S. 61 won't happen until all the equipment is in -- the new consoles will be installed this fall -- and all the bugs in the system are worked out.

"We can't go in halfway. It's got to be ready 100 percent," said Mike Hall, executive director of Marion County 911.

"We've got to be ready to take that first call right away," added Al Durand, chairman of the Marion County 911 board.

What's already in place at the new site is impressive. The dispatch room will have space for up to seven or eight consoles. The agency will start with putting five in place. Marion County 911 now has four stations at its current location, which was initially developed for two.

"We can't predict what the call numbers are going to be, but every year we get busier," Hall said.

The dispatch room is soundproof and bullet proof. The building was constructed to withstand most of the forces of nature and man, with walls that are 21 inches thick and a roof that's 16 inches thick, all of it reinforced with steel and concrete.

"The whole building is built hard, I guess you'd call it," Durand said.

"If there's something catastrophic and there's any buildings left standing, there's a good likelihood this will be one of them," Hall said.

Bids for the facility came in at about $2.2 million. Hall said so far the project is coming in under budget. The agency financed the project through a 15-year lease purchase agreement, but projections indicate it will be paid off sooner.

The 5,900-square-foot facility also features tight security with access mostly limited to staff, as well as office and storage space. There is a full kitchen, a multi-purpose room for meetings and training, and a "quiet room" where dispatchers can go to rest if stuck on site during bad weather or a crisis situation, or even if it's just for down time after handling a call.

Two generators are on site. The first automatically kicks on to handle critical functions if power is lost. The second provides backup if the first fails.

The 911 center is designed to be self-sufficient, Hall said. It's a lesson learned from Hurricane Katrina "where dispatchers lost their homes and were sleeping in halls."

A Homeland Security grant of more than $500,000 was used to buy the latest in 911 technology, including what's needed to pinpoint the location of calls made by cell phones, something Marion County 911 can't do now.

Hall said the new equipment also ties the facility into the next generation of 911 -- Internet Protocol based emergency communications -- basically accepting and pinpointing emergency contacts through texting, tweeting, etc.

"The standards are now just evolving," Hall said.

Hannibal Rural Fire Department Chief Mike Dobson said he's looking forward to the new equipment, because it will allow even better communication between his firefighters and dispatchers. He pointed to a recently outfitted mobile emergency communications unit that was paid for with State Emergency Management Agency grant money as one example of the future capabilities.

--apierceall@whig.com/(573) 221-5879