There is space to grow at the Northern Newton County Emergency Response Center.
The Diamond Area Fire Protection District owns the building, but Fire Chief Gerald Ezell plans to send letters inviting the Newton County Sheriff’s Department, Missouri Highway Patrol, the Missouri Department of Conser-vation, Newton County Ambulance and the Red Cross to set up satellite offices in the building on the corners of Highway V and 59 in Diamond.
“We’re not going to charge them rent. We’re just going to charge them utilities for what they use in a month,” Ezell said. “We’re trying to make it as easy as we can for people to use this building.”
He would like to see the empty offices filled, but even if agencies can’t afford to establish a presence in Diamond, the building will be there in case of an emergency where it could become a command center or an emergency shelter.
There is a lot of room in the building. Ezell estimates it has between 12,000- to 18,000-square-feet. It has six finished offices and a seventh roughed in. The big bay holds a tanker, engine, brush and rescue trucks with room for more, and a second bay could hold another three vehicles. There is a 15-foot by 30-foot training room and an upstairs apartment. After the extra-large door was installed on the south-facing bay in September, the department moved in a day and a half. The old Station No. 1 has been returned to the city.
“We’ve got at least five times the amount of space that we had over there,” Ezell said.
It was a three-year process to get the building. After a series of disasters, people from Newton County began lobbying the Missouri Development Finance Board for help to get the building. Board member Larry Neff, the City of Diamond, the Newton County Commission and Dale Privett all contributed to the effort, said Gib Garrow, Neosho economic development director.
“We’re pretty proud to get it,” Garrow said. “After the ice storm in 2007 we wore the board out.”
Tax credits issued by the board gave building owner Pat Earl a little bit of a break in donating the building. Earl moved his operation, CD Aviation, to Joplin. Normally such an exchange would need to create jobs, but with the number of disasters in the region the board was persuaded and the Northern Newton County Emergency Response Center was created.
