Enhancing Emergency Response Potential

A new Emergency Operations Centre has opened in Alice Springs. The Damian Clifton Centre will provide Police, Fire and Emergency Services with a dedicated operations centre for disaster and security events in the Southern region.

Northern Territory Police, Fire and Emergency Services received a boost recently with the completion of a new Emergency Operations Centre in Alice Springs.

Director of the Northern Territory Emergency Service (NTES), Peter Davies, opened the Damian Clifton Centre in late June.

The facility will act as a central control point for large scale counter disaster and emergency operations in the region.

Located next to NTES’ Southern Region Head Quarters, the facility will enable members of all three emergency services to monitor and control events as they happen.

NTES’ Regional Manager Southern, Clare Barker was very happy to see the Damian Clifton Centre completed.

“To have a facility like this up and running greatly increases our capability to respond to emergency events”, she said.

“The differeNT Emergency Service work very closely in a place like Alice Springs and we’ve already had our colleagues from Police and the Fire Service in to get familiar with the facility.”

The Damian Clifton Centre is named in honour of NTES volunteer member Damian Clifton who sadly passed away last year.
Damian joined NTES in 1997 and was quickly appointed to the position of Training Officer and eventually Unit Officer for the Alice Springs Volunteer Unit.

During his time with NTES Damian’s experience was called upon when he deployed to Queensland to assist in recovery operations following Cyclone Yasi and to New Zealand with the NT Urban Search and Rescue Team in the wake of the 2011 Christchurch earthquake.