Iberia Parish officials will celebrate the groundbreaking this morning for the parish’s new 911 Communication District Emergency Operations Center at the Acadiana Regional Airport.

The cost for the new structure, which will be built to survive Category 5-strength hurricane winds, will be about $5.7 million, Iberia Parish Homeland Security Director Prescott Marshall said previously, with a large portion of that amount coming from federal and state grants.

It will also be the only building in the region built to survive a Category 5 storm.

Marshall said the construction phase is expected to take approximately 14 months, with another 10 months to a year of system installation, integration and testing. If all goes well, he said he expects to be operating from the new facility by 2021.

The ceremony will start at 10 a.m. at 1111 Ember Drive on the Acadiana Regional Airport campus.