The Steamboat Pilot & Today

Denver — Bob Struble’s eyes dart between computer screens and television monitors at the State Emergency Operations Center in Centennial.

As the 2008 Democratic National Convention unfolds in Denver — sometimes unpredictably — Steamboat Springs Fire Rescue’s assistant chief is one of about 70 people at the center monitoring the city and standing ready to assist.

Another is Routt County Emergency Management Direc­tor Chuck Vale, who summed up his week so far as “one hell of an experience” before using a key card to activate an elevator at the secured command center.

“What an emergency operations center does is it ties what we call ESFs — emergency support functions — together,” said Vale, who said ESFs include law enforcement, fire and emergency health services. “We don’t activate it a lot in Colorado, so this has been a great opportunity to get together.”

Vale and Struble are in Cen­tennial because they are members of the Northwest Colorado Incident Management Team. There are three such teams in the state, all of which were called to Centennial for the week to work rotating 12-hour shifts.

“We have a very small organization,” Emergency Opera­tions Center Manager Dick Vnuk said of the Colorado De­­part­ment of Emergency Manage­ment. “We couldn’t do our job without them. It really is a state effort. We just don’t have enough people. They’re an integral part of us doing our job.”

The center is keeping tabs on resources available across the state that can be activated should officials in Denver face an emergency that overwhelms the resources they already have assembled.

“Anything that would surface out of Denver as a large request could be handled here,” Vale said. “Anything you can imagine that would be needed, we’re monitoring in this room.”

As of midday Tuesday, State Emergency Operations Center spokeswoman Linda Rice said no events had required any direct action from the center. Rice said officials closely monitored protest activities Monday night. The Rocky Mountain News reported that about 100 people were arrested that night after an unauthorized march organized by DNC Disruption 08. The same group that organized that event was planning another disruption Tuesday aimed at preventing delegates from reaching the Pepsi Center for convention proceedings, according to the group’s Web site.

“This is a big law enforcement event,” Vale said. “That’s what it is: a law enforcement event. So it’s a challenge.

“You’ve got to balance this law enforcement with the First Amendment rights thing,” Vale said. “Because if something goes astray, then it becomes an emergency event for us. How do you balance that in our society? It’s an interesting challenge.”

In addition to monitoring the events unfolding at any given time, Vale said the center constantly is looking to the future, and asking the “what ifs.” Officials in the center will be on high alert Thursday when Sen. Barack Obama accepts his party’s nomination for president in front of 75,000 people at Invesco Field. Vale said the number of people is just one concern, with another being the traffic issues that will be created when Interstate 25 is closed for the event.

“From this level, we’re just trying to support whatever goes on, wherever it goes on,” Vale said.

That includes events outside of Denver, as well. Although the team was assembled to assist Denver with the Democratic National Convention, Vale said it also is taking the opportunity to monitor wildfires in Moffat County and the Colorado State Fair in Pueblo. On Sunday, three tornados that developed south of Denver thrust the Western Slope emergency manager into unfamiliar territory.

“Old Chuck doesn’t do tornados,” Vale joked.