By Claire Sachse
At a special meeting Monday Aug. 4, the Polk County Board of Commissioners heard a presentation on North Carolina’s emergency management system. The N.C. Department of Public Safety’s Area 15 Coordinator, Danny Gee, gave the presentation and answered questions afterwards.
“Our primary mission is consequence management,” said Gee. The NCDPS is tasked with providing search and rescue assistance, delivering mass care and shelter assistance, protecting life and property, supplementing local government resources, providing incident management, and helping communities recover from emergencies.
Gee reported on the N.C. Emergency Management Act, which clarifies local government responsibilities and authority during an emergency, such as issuing or lifting a state of emergency order, ordering evacuations, or imposing curfews.
In both the 2012 and 2013 fiscal years, Polk County received $35,502 from the Emergency Management Programming Grant (EPMG) deposited into the county’s general fund. Of that, $20,625 is used to reimburse the emergency management director’s salary and the remainder is put into capital reserve for needs such as a vehicle.
The Department of Homeland Security and the EPMG have so far purchased for Polk County a 2011 F-550 prime mover which is used to haul trailers and generators, a trailer with emergency equipment and supplies, a mobile light tower with generator, a 150kw mobile generator, a mass casualty trailer, a county response trailer, and training exercises to prepare first responders and emergency managers.
Gee fielded questions from the public, including one about the state’s emergency response to pandemics. Gee said that the DPS works very closely with public health officials.
“Public health sits on the state emergency response team,” said Gee. “In the past, we’ve had plans built for swine flu, hoof-and-mouth, MERSA. Any pandemic that’s out there we try to build a plan for it. We try to be ready and proactive.”
“We’re one of the better-prepared states to deal with for whatever is out there,” said Gee in response to a question about North Carolina’s standards of preparedness, as compared with other states.
“A lot of that comes from being prepared for hurricanes. Because that’s the biggest disaster, short of a blizzard of ’93, that can hit us. We try to be really proactive.”