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MEDLEY, FLA. (WSVN) - Miami-Dade County’s Emergency Operations Center has been running around the clock to help first responders and residents during the coronavirus pandemic, and officials are showing how the complex operation delivers personal protective equipment throughout the county to first responders and hospitals.
To enter the EOC in Doral, everyone must be wearing a mask, undergo a temperature check and be fitted with a wristband. No one is allowed to take off their mask while inside of the building.
7News cameras captured workers spaced out throughout the facility, and they have some working remotely to adhere to social distancing protocols.
“I sort of describe it like the tortoise and the hare race,” Miami-Dade EOC Director Frank Rollason said. “The hurricane is the hare race, and this is the tortoise race. It is slow, methodical and will be ongoing for a long time.”
The center’s main mission is to find PPE and get it to the agencies that need them throughout the county.
“We buy for the entire county, not just the fire department, but the municipalities, the hospitals, nursing homes, the [assisted living facilities], and they come through us in a coordinated effort,” Rollason said.
The PPE arrives at a county warehouse in Medley. Shortly after its arrival, crews sort the gloves, face masks and other PPE, and as soon as it comes in, it goes back out again to the police, fire departments, nursing homes and hospitals that need it.
“These are all orders that are ready to go out,” Warehouse Coordinator Rudy Collazo said. “We are anywhere between 30 to 60 orders a day.”
The EOC is also coordinating daily food deliveries to 30,000 elderly people in Miami-Dade County, and they just started securing hotels for people who need to quarantine.
“For first responders and nurses from ICUs who do not want to go home because they have people they could infect, and then our first responders, police, fire, corrections if we need to have them isolate for a period of time,” Rollason said.
The work at the facility is never ending, as the county tries to flatten the curve.
“Turned into a 24/7 operation, the warehouse did, so we’re processing orders all day long, all night long,” Collazo said.
“We don’t usually get out of here until 10 or 11 o’clock at night anyway,” Rollason said.
7News cameras captured a shipment intended for Miami Children’s Hospital being loaded into the back of a truck for transport back to the hospital.
All the firefighters who have been working at the facility have already worked a shift out on the road, and then, they come to the facility to work a double shift to get the PPE out.
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