Emergency coordinator reports on July, August activities

By Charlene Sims, Journal staff

LCJeditor@icloud.com

MOUND CITY – Linda Simons, county emergency management coordinator, told to the Linn County Commission on Monday, Aug. 24, that she plans in the future to make monthly reports, however her report at that meeting begin in July since she did not make a report then.

Simons said that on July 1 she attended a webinar from the Kansas Division of Emergency Management (KDEM) on preparedness. It contained on insurance pitfalls during disasters. She said she met with the Linn County sheriff, undersheriff, rural fire and information technology (IT) to put together the standard operating guides (SOG) for the command trailer. That included directives on who was to set up and tear down and cleaning and was in response to the tornado event in April.

She told the commissioners that there was a local emergency planning committee (LEPC) meeting July 23 at the health department and was attended by 22 people. Guest speakers were Natalie Gerety, our regional coordinator from KDEM, and Carol Arnold from the Red Cross. Simons said the next quarterly meeting will be Jan. 27 in Pleasanton.

Simons said that she went to Jefferson County and acted as an evaluator for an exercise that they had entitled “Jefferson County Earthquake.” She reported that in August she taught CPR, first aid, AED classes to the transportation department at Pleasanton USD 344 and she has two more CPR trainings set for September. She also attended the Southeast Regional Kansas Emergency Management Association (KEMA) meeting in Bourbon County.

She explained that Linn County was part of the northeast region, but she felt the county has a lot more in common with the southeast region. So she went down there just to make introduction and see how they handle things. That afternoon she attended an exercise design class for their upcoming exercise. She said she was still working with Terry Kegin, the state training manager from KDEM.

Simons said she wanted to bring the American Red Cross shelter fundamental training to Linn County and this would be open to other counties. They put it out on Kansas training as well as anybody in Linn County that would like to become a Red Cross volunteer.

Simons told the commissioners that she had attended a Linn County department head meeting and it was nice to get to discuss things with the other department heads. Simons said she was part of the Everbridge working group for the northeast region. She said that group had a team meeting to discuss the new functionalities of Everbridge. She also attended the KDEM webinar on avoiding scams after disasters.

She also hosted a meeting that included city and county public work supervisors and city officials.  She said temporary debris sites were located for each city. After that meeting, she was able to complete the debris management plan for the county and sent it off to the state for approval.