Emergency Management director to review area shelters

By Charlene Sims, info@linncountyjournal.com

MOUND CITY – A near miss with a tornado on the ground on April 26 and a potential tornado on April 27 gave many a cause for concern about the lack of public severe weather shelters in Linn County.

That was the assessment of county Emergency Management Direct Randy Hegwald when he spoke to the county commission on Monday, May 6.

Hegwald said that based on social media posts, the lack of shelters in the county seemed to be a big concern. He said they were looking into that and seeing if they could get some locations approved to be local shelters.

Hegwald reported that emergency management will be meeting with the National Weather Service (NWS)  and that there was a good chance of severe weather that night. He said that they would get it posted on the emergency management social media.

Commissioner Danny McCullough asked if Hegwald had received much community input on social media about the storm notifications. 

Hegwald said that he was working with the Everbridge system for emergency notices. Everbridge is supplied free to the counties in Kansas by Homeland Security.

Hegwald said that the was working to get the bugs worked out and called it a “clunky” system because it was difficult for people to sign up on and it was hard to get the notifications right.

McCullough asked Hegwald  if had had checked with other county departments to see if they wanted the Chevy Suburban that he was taking out of service. Hegwald said the vehicle had transmission problems that were a safety issue.  He explained that it was actually titled to the county rural fire department, which had been given permission to purchase it on May 30, 2017 and make repairs to it.

The commissioners approved a declaration of surplus property resolution to sell the 2005 Chevy Suburban for rural fire and also a resolution to declare the 2011 Ford E-350 old transportation van as surplus property.

He also told the commissioners that he had a couple of interviews  for fire department personnel coming up and should be able to report about them soon. 

Hegwald said that during the past week the fire department had six calls bringing the year to date number up to 225. Only one call the past week was for a fire.