Rock County’s Emergency Operations Center is closed after more than a year of managing the pandemic.

The EOC officially activated on March 12, 2020 and deactivated on April 26 after 410 days in operation.

Emergency management director and sheriff’s sergeant Shena Kohler said a few of their emergency management staff are still active to oversee ongoing testing and PPE supply, but they handed off the rest of the operation to the public health department to see through the end of the pandemic.

Now, Kohler and her team are working to collect all of the lessons learned over the 13-month span so they can better handle these types of crises in the future.

COVID-19 provided a new type of hazard they weren’t fully prepared for, but Kohler said it forced them to update some of their operations and rethink how they might handle their next emergencies.

Prior to the pandemic, the last time the Rock County EOC was activated was for the 2017 manhunt for Joseph Jakubowski.