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HomeMy WebLinkAboutEM March 2015GRANT COUNTY EMERGENCY DISASTER SERVICES COMMITTEE MEETING GRANT COUNTY LAW ENFORCEMENT CENTER Lancaster, WI 53813 March 9, 2015 The Grant County Emergency Disaster’s Services was called to order March 9, 2015 at 9:39 a.m. by Chairman Bob Keeney. The following members and personnel were present: EMERGENCY DISASTER SERVICES COMMITTEE: Gary Ranum, John Patcle, Bob Scallon, and Pat Schroeder. Larry Wolf and Lester Jantzen asked to be excused. GUESTS: Steve Braun, Emergency Government and Tonya White, Recording Secretary. Steve Braun verified the agenda has been posted by Linda Gebhard and it was posted on the cou nty website. Pat second by Bob S. approved the agenda. John second by Pat approved the minutes. Pat second by John approved the bills. All above motions carried. Public Comments: None Director’s Monthly Report: None Under Annual Report Steve showed a video of the Platteville Tornado Recovery that will be shown at the Governor’s Conference on Wednesday. Pat asked if there was anything we would change. Steve said that every time you experience an event like this, there are always things you learn and would do differently. Human Services and aid to affected families is one area where we feel we have learned quite a bit in the past two year s. Steve explained what an incident action plan (IAP) is and that that he feels we need to get those out sooner following an incident. The IAP came out three days in to the Platteville Tornado which Steve feels was too long. Steve passed out a checklist sheet that summarizes the major considerations for a community following a major/disaster incident. The checklist is something that Steve often uses at the first Emergency Operations Center (EOC) briefing during an event. Our office is hoping to conduct some disaster preparedness training for city and village officials to help the officials think about what they need to be doing during an emergency. Steve gave a summary of the department's Annual Report. Our office worked with the Small Business Administration (SBA) and Wisconsin Disaster Fund to help the citizens that were affected by the tornadoes in the County. Our office is also working with municipalities from the 2013 flash flooding. There are still a few townships that have not yet submitted necessary closeout paperwork and received their full federal funding. Our office was also involved in writing AFG grants for fire and EMS units in the County. Muscoda Fire Department did receive an AFG grant. Our office is actively pushing for schools, daycares, businesses and nursing homes to purchase an emergency alert monitor from us. It is activated from the 911 center and gives real time updates for severe weather and also pushes information out to communities about chemical spills and other impor tant information. The alert monitors are a supplement to weather radios, not a replacement. Our office also did quite a bit of work in early 2014 gathering statistics from the cold weather events to support a federal disaster declaration. We were unfortunately not awarded federal funding, even though Wisconsin met the federal damage threshold for an award. Our office also continued working to upgrade the radio system. The system is working well and has increased the range. There will still be some fin e tuning that needs to be done this week. We also continue to build up the level 3 regional hazmat team. Last year we had weather spotter training in Lancaster. This year we are having training in Fennimore and Platteville. We feel both these training sessions will be well attended with the tornadoes that hit both the areas last year. The Southwest Wisconsin Technical Rescue Team is no longer a part of the state collapse rescue network so training money has not been available for some time. We have been working with Southwest Technical College in Fennimore to address this issue and bring training to the region for interested public safety departments. Last fall there was a train-the-trainer class that trained instructors on trench rescue and now we can offer the training to anyone in our region through SWTC. Steve discussed the hazardous materials planning that our office conducts for facilities in Grant County that use hazardous chemicals. The plans look at what worst case scenario would be in case of a spill or fire. The plan also looks at the special facilities in the vulnerability zone. Under Old Business Steve spoke about the communications grant status. The work has been completed and there is still some fine tuning to do but that should be done this week. Chris has done a good job about communicating to everyone that if there is a problem with the system he needs to know right away so the issue can be resolved. Under New Business Steve explained that Ron Kind has recently introduced the RESPONSE Act Bill. This bill is to help first responders in communities in the event of a train derailment or spill. This bill will help identify the short comings and equipment needed. Steve showed a video where he was interviewed by WKOW 27 News about the Galena train derailment and how our local communities are preparing for this type of situation. Our hazmat team was called to Galena to assist. We were there a few hours and then were released from the scene. Our biggest concern if a train derailment happens in a community is that we have very limited equipment to handle such an incident. Two big areas of shortcoming are firefighting foam and environmental mitigation equipment such as floating boom. We found after the Galena train derailment that one shortcoming in our region is that it takes a very long time to size up the scene of an event that occurs in a remote area. It would be very useful to have a drone to quickly deploy and size up the scene. The drones that are currently available will stream live video on a tablet or smart phone. Steve showed a video of a drone working and explained why having the piece of equipment would be an asset for us. Steve noted that they are eligible items through the state hazardous materials grant and he has received approval from the state to order one through this year's grant application. Wyalusing State Park will be sponsoring a Railroad Emergency Response and Hazardous Materials Awareness Training on April 8th at 9 a.m. presented by BNSF. Motion to adjourn by Bob Scallon second by John Patcle. Motion Carried. Respectfully submitted, Tonya White, Recording Secretary