I’ve become an executive staff member of our county-wide emergency response team headquarters as a prep.
As a member of the executive staff (volunteer position) I am a part of all conversations with our local emergency management governing body, and work directly with the man in charge of directing our entire county’s emergency management response coordination team.
In other words, I get to hear EXACTLY what is going on as it happens, and get to be a part of the team that makes decisions when a disaster occurs. So far, since joining, I have been a part of a big mock exercise and have been activated once for a “Level 2” emergency.
Emergency management has many layers
Due to OPSEC I am not going to say exactly what my role is, but I am working directly with all of the local police, fire, medical and rescue assets, and have a copy of our county’s exceedingly detailed disaster management plan.
I now don’t have to guess what’s going on, I KNOW what the authorities are doing, and am in a position to make an impact with suggestions.
If this is something you can see yourself doing, I HIGHLY recommend you look into it because it gives you an invaluable source of information as to how to best protect you-and-yours in a disaster situation, and you might also help the folks in charge make good choices instead of spotty ones.
Since I have the county’s plan, if there’s a big gas leak or if there’s a twister, a terrorist act, civil unrest, etc., I KNOW who is going to be called, where the resources are going to be staged, what the planned actions will be because I have read the book and know what is available and what is not.
Not your typical prep… but…
Not your typical prep, but I think it’s a good one… besides, it’s good to volunteer and help others just on general principles… who knows, perhaps I can be of help to them using some of what I know…
So what exactly are we doing that might interest preppers?
Mostly they are planning inter-agency cooperation. That’s been a big deal since Katrina, where that totally fell apart.
Mutual aid
Mutual aid and quick response to disaster, as well as better communications and an emphasis on knowing which group has the assets needed and how to contact them quickly is one of our main focuses.
For example, let’s say we have an earthquake, and it knocks down several bridges over creeks. Obviously, the people to call to fix it are the state and county highway departments… what we are doing is finding out not just who to call, but also helping them coordinate to find out who has the materials needed to put in temporary bridges (for example, where can they get the road tubes if they don’t have the right sizes in their maintenance yards)… they already know where and how to get the shot rock and smaller rock, etc…
We are building databases of things like “if the phones are down and the Burlington Northern has a derailment due to an earthquake that has a hazmat situation, who do we call…” If it’s due to an earthquake situation, and all the hazmat trained crews are unavailable, then we need to do evacuations of everybody in the area, and especially downwind… additionally, we need to close the roads so that people don’t drive into potentially dangerous gasses not even realizing they are doing so… so where do we get the manpower to put a road block up on 100 county roads? Who do we call to do that? If this train is dumping poison into the ground and streams, how do we work to contain it?
But isn’t government the problem, not the solution?
A lot of preppers, I think, mistake all government functions as insidious; they are not. On the local and area level, it’s all about keeping people safe.
Once you get to the state level, that’s where it becomes REALLY political.
When I talked about this on a prepper forum, I was asked the question:
“But what happens to your community preps when a disaster happens in another part of the state and the government takes your county’s preps NDAA?
It would be good to have an ear in the room, but is there really any power in your organization against NDAA?”
It’s not like our emergency management system has a ton of preps sitting around to be “taken” by anybody.
We have mutual aid agreements, which ALL emergency reaction forces need (sometimes you need help from your neighbors) but the government can’t order us to pick up one of our evacuation shelters and move it to another part of the state, since it’s a building.
Prepping with Uncle Sam…
What we do is more, prepping wise, is to find out what our community assets are and where the holes are in our system… for example, how many emergency shelters do we have that are completely handicapped accessible. How many have generators or are wired to accept generators, who is available to help should we have a hazmat situation and we need to evacuate a city, that kind of stuff.
In Missouri, our biggest concerns (in order of likelihood) are hazmat, severe weather on a major destructive scale and earthquake. Just think about all the pipelines you have running through your county, all of the railroads and the highways.
Think about what some of those trucks and railroad cars are carrying on them… hazmat is a REAL concern for all emergency forces… no, it’s not “doomsday” but is sure can ruin your day if you are not ready to deal with it.
Being a part of the system has changed my personal prepping a bit by reminding me that the most likely things I need to be prepped for are smaller emergencies, since they happen all around us all the time.
Yes, I am still prepping for the “big deal”, yes I do have abundant water and a year’s supply of food for me and mine, but I also now have upgraded my communications and hazmat preps, any my 72 hour bags have been emphasized as well.