Two companies, one of them local, are interested in helping build a projected new Cape Girardeau County emergency management agency center, responding to the county commission's call for a request for qualifications for the proposed project.

• Dille Pollard Architecture has offices in Cape Girardeau and Poplar Bluff, Missouri.
• Ross & Baruzzini has 14 offices in North America, including St. Louis.

Commission staff and county EMA director Mark Winkler will examine the information sent by both firms before taking a next step.

"We're at a very early stage here," said First District Commissioner Paul Koeper Thursday.

Koeper previously sounded the alarm for the need to house all county-owned or managed EMA equipment indoors -- citing devastating tornadoes that have struck both north and south of the county -- e.g., Mayfield, Kentucky, and in the Missouri Bootheel on Dec. 10 and Fredericktown and St. Mary, Missouri, on Oct. 24.

Winkler, leader of county EMA since July 2018 and with 28 years of emergency management experience at the state level, cited examples of equipment that could be housed in a new reinforced structure: two animal shelter trailers assigned to the county's health department and a mass fatality trailer parked next to the county coroner's office.

The latter was most recently deployed to Mississippi County following March 17's deadly crash near Charleston, Missouri, which took five lives on Interstate 57 at mile marker 13.4.

"We need a facility that can house all this equipment, keep it out of the weather and allow us to work on it so that the minute it's needed, it can go," said Winkler

Koeper, in his remarks, stressed the need for a disaster-proof structure.

"If we had a disaster, we need a safe room-quality building, capable of sustaining 240-mile-an-hour winds," he said. "If we have all this equipment and it blows away, what good is it to anybody?"

Safe room

Dille Pollard, on its website, touts its experience with safe rooms, noting in a link accessible on its home page, "We have collaborated on 16 buildings and secured more than $27 million in funding for FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) safe room projects."

The company added it has worked with area schools to integrate EF5 tornado-resistant safe rooms into new and existing facilities, with Three Rivers College in Poplar Bluff cited as one example.