A look inside 'top secret' Vancouver Olympic security command centre
 
From the outside, all that sets this nondescript, blue-windowed
structure apart from the office buildings, restaurants and shops along
this stretch of No. 5 Road in Richmond are the closed-circuit cameras
mounted along the rooftop, and a chain-link fence surrounding the
grounds.
 
Step through the doors and you enter a different world, a different reality.
 
Uniformed and plainclothes police from departments across Canada
mingle with camouflage-clad Canadian soldiers in rooms full of giant
video screens and banks of computer monitors.
 
“It’s going to be like CTU in ‘24’,” says B.C. RCMP Insp. Tim Shields,
referring to the Counter-Terrorist Unit in the hit TV show.
 
The entire facility is classified “secret,” and is linked to the North
American Aerospace Defence Command (Norad), to U.S. military forces
across the border, to the Canadian Department of Defence, and to
government departments from Vancouver City Hall and the provincial
disaster-management unit up to the Canadian Security Intelligence
Service (CSIS) and the Prime Minister’s office.
 
“There are some areas in the building that are classified as
‘top-secret,’” Shields says. “That’s as high as you can go.”
 
Operations areas in the two-floor building surround a large atrium
brightened by a peaked, opaque glass roof.
 
In the atrium’s centre sits the Olympics-area portion of the
Challenger Map, an 23-by-24-metre topographic map of B.C. fashioned by
George Challenger and his family from 986,000 hand-cut, stacked pieces
of painted plywood, and displayed at Vancouver’s Pacific National
Exhibition (PNE) for 43 years from 1954.
 
Throughout this building, militarized language prevails.
 
Metro Vancouver, the Sea to Sky Corridor, and Whistler make up the
“Olympic Theatre Footprint.”
 
Areas outside venue security zones are the “Urban Domain.”
 
While the facility’s top floor is occupied by high-walled cubicles and
enclosed offices, the ground floor houses “Theatre Command.”
 
The RCMP run the Olympic-security show, commanding 6,000 police, 4,500
Canadian Forces soldiers, and 5,000 private security guards.
 
By Games time, 555 staff will be working in this facility.
 
Security planning started soon after Vancouver was confirmed as the
2010 Olympics site in 2003.
 
Work in this building, formerly occupied by Motorola and slated to
house Richmond’s RCMP detachment post-Games, began in late 2007.
 
“We could probably plan for another year and not be any better
prepared than we are today,” says RCMP Asst. Commissioner Bud Mercer,
head of the entire Olympic-security operation.
 
Armed police guard the outside of the headquarters building.
 
The property’s fenced perimeter is equipped with an intruder-alarm system.
 
Movement within the building is restricted by locked, swipe-card-operated doors.
 
“Your card only takes you through the doors you need to get through,”
Mercer says.
 
For security reasons, even Mercer cannot bring a cellphone past the
check-in desk for the “Integrated Command Centre” on the ground floor.
 
In the facility’s “Operations Communications Centre,” up to 36
dispatchers will sit at open desks in front of screens and banks of
monitors, to oversee and control the movement of planes and
helicopters in the air, boats and ships on the water, and police,
soldiers and guards on foot and in vehicles on the ground.
 
Their screens and monitors will stream satellite imagery along with
electronic communications and other information.
 
A separate room, also filled with desks and screens, is set aside for
abrupt crisis-control.
 
Nearby in the “Incident Interface Team” room, staff will track police,
fire and ambulance responses throughout Metro Vancouver, the Sea to
Sky corridor and Whistler.
 
Any incident that could affect public safety or security, from a
street fight or shootout to a downed power line or a traffic jam, are
to be monitored from start to finish.
 
Images from the 900 cameras leased by the Integrated Security Unit,
that point inward at Olympic venues, will be monitored at the venues,
but can be viewed at the Richmond command centre.
 
“If the need presents itself that we need to know what’s going on at a
venue, that feed can be available,” says RCMP Const. Mandy Edwards, a
spokeswoman for the ISU.
 
The 5,000 private security guards are charged with conducting
airport-type security checks at entrances to Games venues.
 
Should a security incident occur anywhere in the Olympics area,
technicians in the “geo-mapping centre” will pinpoint the location and
within minutes, their printers will be spitting out large maps of the
site and its surroundings.
 
At the epicentre of any incident response will be the “Integrated
Command Centre,” with its single “gold” section and two “silver”
sections.
 
The commander of the “gold” room — one of five rotating commanders
drawn from the ranks of the nation’s most experienced police officials
— sits behind a glass partition, directing all operations in the
entire security zone, including the airspace and marine areas.
 
The “gold” commander reports to Mercer.
 
Two “silver” commanders from a rotating pool hold responsibility for
the Whistler and Metro Vancouver areas, reporting to the “gold” chief.
 
Across the hall, the Canadian army, navy and air force have their own
sub-command centre in the “Canadian Forces Games Joint Operations
Centre,” working under the ISU umbrella.
 
If for any reason ISU headquarters cannot function, operations will be
run from a “redundant” site in Vancouver, Mercer says.
 
International security consultant Ray Mey, a former FBI
counter-terrorism agent who headed security at the 2002 Winter
Olympics in Salt Lake City and has been monitoring 2010 security
preparations, believes the ISU is well prepared for the Games in B.C.
 
“I just have a lot of faith in Canada being able to make these Games a
safe and secure and successful one,” Mey says.
 
But even the best security setup is vulnerable to the ever-changing
terrorist threat, Mey says.
 
“It’s absolutely impossible to think that you can completely secure an
event like this.”
 
Deployment of U.S. military soldiers and resources from across the
border remains a last resort, Mercer says.
 
“It would have to be a fairly major catastrophic event for American
forces to come into Canada,” Mercer says.
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