GINA B. GOOD / PVT Jerry Fuge, foreground, reaches to adjust the dual-band UHF/VHF radio in the communications room at the Nye County Emergency Services Center while Ron Daviau, center, operates the high frequency radio and Richard Gamble readies his Automatic Positition Reporting System screen to track field positions of ham operators. RELATED STORY 'Earthquake' rocks valley, power out in Pahrump Advertisement

The best kept secret in Pahrump may be the new center for disaster preparedness, completed in November to house Nye County Emergency Services.

Located off Basin Avenue, on Siri Lane across from the Nye County Animal Shelter, the building is handy to the sheriff's substation, which facilitates close coordination between the two agencies.

Because the 4,800-square-foot building was a long time in the planning by Emergency Services Director Brent Jones and his staff, it is filled with much needed technology and back-up systems to keep the facility running in case of short- or long-term power outages.

Everything about the facility is geared toward managing "the big nasty" event -- whether it be a natural disaster causing power outages throughout Pahrump or terror attack with injuries.

The simulated earthquake exercise Saturday made use of some, but by no means all, of the advanced communications equipment and technology now available.

The director's office serves as more than the day-to-day business center of the facility. It is also command central, with a conference table and satellite television for use when other systems fail.

The satellite system has an independent hookup from the county computer network system, PBX phone lines and AT&T phone lines -- all of which are available in the director's office for emergency use. There is also satellite Internet access.

The lights and power outlets in the director's room are backed up by generators.

According to Communications Officer Fred Jones, whose job it was to help plan and install much of the emergency equipment in the new building and field locations, "We can get a satellite picture of where an event is taking place. The equipment in the director's office is similar to what's in the radio communications room. If the main power goes off, the backup generator kicks in."

The rest of the building has limited back-up power, mostly lights.

The director's office is strategically located away from the larger training and emergency operations center, where multiple phone lines, the PBX system and individual AT&T lines can be quickly set up to accommodate multiple teams of workers during emergency situations.

For Saturday's simulated earthquake training, ham radio operators used the training room for early morning briefings before heading out to set up in field locations in Pahrump and Amargosa Valley.

The two plasma monitors in the training room are used for day-to-day training and have access to the satellite system to receive the Weather Channel, Las Vegas television news stations and CNN. The training room can be divided in half for groups working on separate projects and has multiple data locations ready for computers.

The training room also has 100 percent emergency backup power.

The ham radio operators also used the equipment in the communications room to keep tabs on teams of volunteers during last weekend's training drill.

"We have the capability of talking through the county radio system," explained Jones. "The sheriff's office and our county fire departments can talk from Pahrump to Beatty by radio. We are in the process of building a trunk system and modernizing our current equipment to state of the art.

"Soon we will be linked via microwave. We already have amateur-ham radio communication with a dedicated volunteer team of about 30 trained people. The radio room covers all ham bands, with dual-band radios."

There is also a computer in the radio communications room to enable emergency service personnel to send packet data messages -- like text messages for sensitive information that can't be broadcast.

A mapping system called Automatic Position Reporting System also runs on the communication room computer, showing GPS coordinates of ham radio operators throughout the Pahrump Valley and virtually throughout the nation.

The Emergency Services facility can be identified by the high-gain antennas on its roof, used to increase the range of the radio equipment, or sometimes by the bright fire trucks being washed or serviced in the maintenance yard.