EMERGENCY OPERATING CENTERS – THE BASIC CONCEPTS, a film from 1967, begins with amazing footage of various emergencies such as a forest fire (00:00:15:00) , a tsunami (00:00:25:00) , a blizzard (00:00:035:00) and a nuclear mushroom cloud. (00:00:49:00) We then are taught some basic information about what the EOC stands for. (00:01:25:00) Police and fire dispatch equipment are seen at (00:04:32:00). More equipment from a standard emergency operating center is shown at (00:05:50:00).
Emergency Operating Centers: The Basic Concepts was created by the Department of Defense to serve as an introduction for a series of instructional films designed to train radiological monitors in the process of fallout detection. The film’s host, a young Conrad Bain (00:01:10:00) just years before his breakout role as Mr. Drummond on Diff’rent Strokes, creates an extensive back-story for his command center, which provides exposition for the subsequent films in the series. Set in “Central City” he theorizes that the emergency now threatening the population is a nuclear attack.
Throughout the film Bain spars with a sarcastic and thickly accented janitorial assistant. Played by comedian Arnold Stang, (00:03:45:00) he is gifted with the ability to make office equipment appear with a snap of his fingers and subsequently provides Bain’s EOC with all the supplies needed to maintain a functioning government, though he louses about every task. (00:06:53:00) His presence offers a unique comic relief to an otherwise grievous situation, and was likely designed to help keep audience attention focused on Bain’s procedural descriptions. To help the EOC personnel allocate already strained resources in such a way as to be effective, Bain and Stang turn to the Emergency Log, a massive chalkboard occupying an entire wall in the EOC (00:08:20:00) which tracks, in painstaking detail, the location of every ambulance, police cruiser, fire engine, rescue crew, and whatever other elements the city has on hand to help including mobile public address systems. The second section of the board, Bain explains, is a comprehensive overview of the Central City shelter system (00:12:45:00), documenting the shelter occupancy, and other issues such as overcrowding and contamination.
We encourage viewers to add comments and, especially, to provide additional information about our videos by adding a comment! See something interesting? Tell people what it is and what they can see by writing something for example like: “01:00:12:00 — President Roosevelt is seen meeting with Winston Churchill at the Quebec Conference.”
This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD and 2k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com
