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transport, or an auxiliary police patrol exercising normal patrol activities, the City's
design and installation of emergency backup generators for its command center was
performed specifically for the purpose of enabling the City to be prepared against the
danger of mass calamity. Clearly, this was not routine City business. The City was not
merely buying office furniture for an office, or doing any of the other mundane activities
of a City bureaucracy; it was making possible the continuation, maintenance, and
operation of a command center, intended to lead the City and its population successfully
through a catastrophic event. The record reflects the good faith effort by the City "to
have self-sufficiency in the command center if something catastrophic happened so that
we could function for a two-week period with electricity . . . so that we could survive a
catastrophic event." (Hauer Dep. at 52, 9-15.)
Although the design and construction of the backup generator system did
not occur in the rush of an actual occurring catastrophe, the very point of having a
carefully designed OEM and command center was to ensure that these emergency
facilities would be in place and operating before a disaster occurred. And when that is
done, the municipality is immune from liability for negligence in relation to the
maintenance and operation of such facilities. See Ard v. Oklahoma, 382 P.2d 728 (Okla.
1963) (finding that an Oklahoma statute similar to the New York DEA immunized the
municipality from liability for injuries sustained by a child playing on the door of an
underground fallout shelter in a city park).
As would be expected with such a specialized project, private architects
and engineers were engaged to do the work, some directly by the City, and some by
contractors who were themselves engaged by the City. They worked in response to the
