The effectiveness of Monroe County Emergency Management’s response was a topic of a staff report and public comment at a Wednesday meeting of the Monroe County Board of Commissioners.
(George Hale)
Last week’s derecho, or wind storm, that left tens of thousands without power has passed, but the local emergency response remains a hot topic of conversation.
The effectiveness of Monroe County Emergency Management’s response was a topic of a staff report at a Wednesday meeting of the Monroe County Board of Commissioners.
Presenting that day was Jamie Niebel, director of Monroe County Emergency Management. Niebel said the department struggled with connectivity issues along with at least 90,000 customers who dealt with outages a day after the fact, mostly in western and south-central Indiana.
As a result, emergency updates on the department’s website were not always up to date, according to Niebel. She apologized for the delays and noted that the department shared updates with the community through its emergency alert system. Residents must sign up for alerts by phone or online to receive alert messages via text or email.
While the commissioners praised the emergency response and departmental collaboration, some such as Perry Township Dan Combs, were more critical. Combs wrote a lengthy Facebook post Saturday calling the emergency response into question.
Combs said the county emergency status early Saturday was Green, indicating “normal operations,” according to the department’s color-coded emergency status types. But there were also more than 15,000 Duke Energy customers experiencing outages at the time, he said.
Combs also said he visited the county commissioners’ website, which instructed residents in need of help to contact their township trustee for essentials.
“This immediately rubbed me very wrong,” Combs said. “People will refer to us for emergency services, like we’re a miniature FEMA, as opposed to the county providing a service.”
Dan Combs. (Courtesy of Dan Combs)
Combs said he was overwhelmed by messages to his personal Facebook account from people requesting essentials like generators, refrigerators, freezers and fans. Combs said township trustees’ function, according to Indiana Code, is to assist low-income residents — not anyone in need of essentials during an emergency.
“Just because we have an available cash supply doesn’t mean because there’s storm damage, we suddenly make everybody qualify as being low-income,” he said. “We don’t want anyone to do without, and we can stretch the rules one or two times. I don’t like doing that, because then perhaps everybody thinks we can do it forever.”
Niebel said she agreed with Combs’ point, adding, “Township trustees are not FEMA. FEMA is unique; they are that top tier of response …. Trustees have their own limitations. They have a limited amount of money to work with, primarily focused on lower-income folks.”
Combs also said the website instructed residents without power to visit a local cooling center — but food, showers and bedding were not available there.
Niebel took the opportunity Wednesday to explain the functional difference between shelters and cooling/warming centers when there’s a weather emergency.
“Shelters are typically hosted by the Red Cross for staffing purposes,” Niebel said. “They provide a place to sleep and usually meals. Cooling centers and warming centers … provide a place to rest and cool down or warm up, depending on the situation. You can charge your devices. We typically have those at fire stations so that we can provide first aid and basic life support services.”
Jamie Niebel [Courtesy of Community Access Television Services (CATS)]
David Henry also weighed in Wednesday. Henry is the chair of the Monroe County Democratic Party but also teaches emergency management at Indiana University and served as the public health emergency coordinator and medical reserve corps coordinator for Monroe County from 2006 to 2007.
Henry urged the commissioners to make public an After Action Report for the storm. The purpose of an After Action Report is to identify and address areas of improvement after an incident, according to the Indiana Department of Health.
“That’s an emergency management best practice,” Henry said. “It’s part of the understanding of mitigation and response and recovery and should include some basic questions that should be answered for the community.”
David Henry. (Courtesy of David Henry)
Those questions include the following, according to Henry:
Was the emergency operations center activated partially or fully? Why or why not?
Who is our currently designated public information officer in the county emergency management plan that would allow for the providing of regular updates to the community and internal and external stakeholders?
What steps were taken for food safety in our community as food began to spoil four hours after non-refrigeration?
What was the continuity of the government plan for executives that may have been out of the community during the time of the derecho and who was responsive in those executive spaces?
Niebel said energy companies are still working to restore power in some areas and couldn’t say exactly when the After Action Report would be complete.
“It seems like we just can’t catch a break,” Niebel said. “It just seems like we get one storm right after the other here lately. Climate change is kind of in full force, so we’re catching it a lot right now.”
Henry also highlighted the high number of demands placed on township trustees and food pantries in the storms' wake.
“This is meant to be constructive,” he said. “I hope good questions are going to be asked over the next few months. Thirty-three percent of our community lives in poverty. They just threw out their paychecks in their refrigerators this week.”
