CINCINNATI — Cities across Ohio and the country are preparing for protests and big crowds, and first responders aren't taking any chances.

Emergency crews in Cincinnati are activating the city's emergency operations center. 

Massive crowds, events and planned protests triggered the opening of this Cincinnati and Hamilton County's Emergency Operation Center. It's a hub for all of the city’s first responders.

“We have 72 working positions, so that means there is a place for every agency," Cincinnati Assistant Fire Chief Matt Flagler said.

Flagler is leading the operation.

“We're the people that are in the background, supplying information and resources to our response personnel who are on the scene," he said. 

But that only happens during what he calls unusual circumstances and when there’s big crowds.

“That would be like your hazardous materials incident and any incident that has a very high impact to lives and property, any incident where we know that we want to issue lots of really relevant and timely information, we will do that," said Flagler. 

He said having an emergency response team here helps to streamline the process and respond faster.

“We are activated about 20 days a year and a full scale environment and then we always have crews either available or we operate in, we would call, a warm state where we have a few folks here just making sure we're monitoring information throughout the day," Flagler said.

He said the center will be up and running on Saturday, throughout the weekend, during when they’re expecting those big crowds.

“Density always equals problems, so we want to make sure we can address and incident or event at a special event very quickly," Flagler said.