The Jeff Davis Parish Police Jury is in the initial stages of planning and constructing a hurricane safe room to house essential police jury personnel during natural disasters and other emergencies.

Funding for the project is being provided by FEMA’s Hazardous Mitigation Grant Program (HMGP). The program provides funds to state and local governments to implement hazard mitigation measures to reduce or eliminate long-term risk to life and property by lessening the impact of a disaster.

“It’s a hurricane-proof room so when we go into a situation where we may have to pull our people out, we need a place for them to stay,” Police Jury President Steve Eastman said. “Then when we have an incident, they can disperse and do what we have to do after the incident.”

The building, which is expected to withstand hurricane-force winds, will provide a base of operations for essential police jury personnel, including road and maintenance crews, during natural disasters. The structure will allow crews to ride out a disaster in the building and quickly respond following the event.

“The multipurpose building at the fairgrounds is used by the National Guard, so the safe room will be used by the police jurors, road and maintenance crews and other essential personnel,” Eastman said.

Kelly George, senior disaster recovery manager for DCMC Partners noted that the building can be used 365 days a year but has to be ready to be used as a hurricane safe room during a disaster.

“There’s a gray sky use for this, and there’s also a blue sky use for this,” George said. “So we want to make sure it fits both of those uses. A lot of times people get fixated on that safe room use, and then the building doesn’t really do what they need it to do the other 364 days of the year. Its primary function is to protect life, but there’s nothing that says you cannot use it for anything else if you want to.”

Preliminary designs for the 2,600-square-foot safe room include a reception and check-in area, restrooms, showers, storage for emergency supplies, a mechanical room, and a generator room. It will also have a small office for monitoring weather, emergency communication, and coordinating for long sheltering.

“The goal is to have a large safe room, but we can break that up using either some sort of sliding glass partitions that come out and lock in place,” architect John Melancon, of Porche May Architects in Lake Charles said, in presenting proposed site strategies and schematic plans to police jurors this week. “We can divide this space out how we want it, but overall, this is one large room and it is easy for us to basically divide up using those operable partitions.”

Architect Derek Porche of Porche May Architects stressed that the plans are in the process of design and are still evolving as the project moves forward. A more detailed floor plan is expected to be presented in April.

The safe room will be located behind the police jury annex and parish courthouse in Jennings. The prison yard from the old parish jail will be demolished for the project.