Lakes Region News - Tuesday, March 21, 2000 - Mutual aid center nears completion - By NORMAN MILLER - Staff Writer

LACONIA — A state-of-the-art facility with more than three times the space is what the Lakes Region Mutual Fire Aid Association will be getting when it moves into its new facility near the state prison later this year.

On Monday, Chief Doug Aiken and representatives from Lefevbre Construction went through the new facility on an inspection tour. Other than a couple of minor items, such as a loose floorboard and a loose outlet, the building, formerly part of the Laconia State School, appeared to be in good shape.

"We had a target date to be out of our center by mid-year, and we think we'll make that," said Aiken. "We're waiting for some critical pieces of equipment, and they won't be here until mid-April."

The two pieces of equipment are a generator and an uninterupptible power source for the computers, Aiken said. They were supposed to be in Laconia earlier this year or late last year, but Y2K demands pushed back the availability of the equipment.

According to Aiken, the move to the new facility from the basement of the Belknap County Superior Courthouse, is needed. The main reason is size. The current facility is 1,600 square feet. The portion of the 17,000 square foot building Mutual Aid will use on the former state school campus is 5,000 square feet. "We don't have enough room," said Aiken. "The space we were in could support one operator, maybe two. This room (control room) is bigger than we are now."

The new control room will be set up with four separate, but identical, consoles so four different operators can work at once. There will be no noise other than people talking because the computers will have all-touch screens rather than keyboards. Other items such as printers will be kept in a separate room.

Also, the appearance will be better. In the new center, there is a raised floor off the actual floor. Each panel of the raised floor is removable, and all wires are under the floor. "We had cables hanging from the ceiling," said Aiken of the current facility. "We're really pleased with our raised floor system."

The facility will cost $777,000 by the time the construction is done. The cost is being funded equally by all 35 member towns, many of which weren't pleased with the equal cost. However, all towns ended up paying their share after last week's town meetings.

Aiken said the new facility will allow for more than just safety-related issues. A meeting room and board room are open for use by any member community. "For instance," said Aiken, "if a community had labor negotiations and they wanted to hold them outside of their community, they could come here."

In addition to the new facility, the LRMFA is making the change from low-band radios to high-band radios. A new tower is already in place outside of the facility. Aiken said it was more and more difficult to find equipment that still used low-band. He also said high-band will provide a better service. "We will be able to communicate with all of our communities at one time," Aiken said.