By Stephen Zeigler

The Daily Citizen    28 March 2004

White County residents can feel more secure than ever before that if a natural or man-made disaster hits them where they live, help from many directions will be quick to respond.

The creation of the Department of Homeland Security in the wake of 9/11 is associated in the public mind with foreign terrorists, but the national state of alert is aiding local people with more familiar emergencies: Mandates for local response plans to all kinds of catastrophes have come with offers of massive funding for local preparedness in the form of grants.

White County citizens as well as cities and agencies are eagerly accepting the offers.

Pangburn has just applied for a grant to start a First Responders program. Ten Letona citizens recently become the first group to accept an offer from the a state Community Response Team (CERT) to be trained in citizen response to emergencies. Neighborhood Watch groups are also being encouraged and instructed by CERT teachers in Searcy.

The Searcy Fire Department can now use a mobile decontamination trailer to wash down someone exposed to hazardous materials. White County got it with a $307,573 grant from Homeland Security, and took it to help in the Jan. 16 chemical fire in Conway.

County Judge Bob Parish said, "There's a lot of money coming down the pike from the Homeland Security bill. We'll lead the state on having the best security compliance and readiness, when all is said and done."

Indeed, grant money for preparedness is abundant. FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Assistance) is now under the Homeland Security umbrella, and $165 million in grants are available through that organization this year. In addition, Homeland Security opened the application period March 1 to share in $745.6 million dollars from the Assistance to Firefighters Grant Program.

In two years, White County has already received Homeland Security grants for equipment totaling $515,000 said Lt. Stan Rogers of the Searcy Fire Department, who wrote the grants.

Parish's vision is of a White County equipped for anything, funded by grants through the giant Homeland Security Department by way of the Arkansas Department of Emergency Management (ADEM) and FEMA.

About 800 White County homeowners in the last five years have responded to the constant threat of tornado devastation by installing storm shelters. They are taking advantage of a government offer to pay half the cost up to $1,000, said Eric Swanson, White County Emergency Services Coordinator.

Swanson said 306 new shelters have been built in Searcy since the '99 storm; 117 in Beebe; 81 in Judsonia; and 47 in Bald Knob.

"I inspect anywhere from four to 12 a week and have had as many as 25 to 30 in a week," said Swanson.

HISTORY

OF DEVASTATION

White County was not always so prepared to cope with catastrophe.

On March 21, 1952, the most deadly tornado in Arkansas history roared up through England, Cotton Plant and Bald Knob. On the way, it killed 52 in Judsonia. The total dead was 132.

A.R. "Robert" Brown, now retired at Harding Place in Searcy with his wife Dorothy Ruth, was one of only two physicians available to help as carloads of injured people were brought to the Hawkins Clinic Hospital, then open in Searcy.

"We worked from 6 p.m. to 4 p.m. the next day before we finally got word to Little Rock and had some orthopedic doctors come up to help," he said.

White County is still Tornado Alley. Last May 16, storms did $10 million damage in the state and flooding was so bad Parish declare the county a disaster area. John Robinson from the National Weather Service in Little Rock later found evidence of seven tornadoes in White County that day.

Two years earlier, on Jan 21, 1999, a state record was set when 11 tornadoes were recorded in the county, hitting Beebe particularly hard, destroying the junior high school, the high school gym and damaging the auditorium.

Today, Beebe has a new junior high school and its gymnasium is a local vaccination site in case of a biological attack. Two wings of the high school are constructed as safe rooms for a storm emergency. And Assistant Junior High Principal Rhonda Smith is trained as a district crisis response coordinator.

The school's new emergency program is ordered by the state Office of Emergency Preparedness, Smith said, but Beebe took to it eagerly because of it's 1999 experience. The Beebe Schools District now has plans for bomb threats, tornadoes, evacuations, Colombine-type incidents, biological emergencies, even nuclear attacks. They have mock drills and table-talk drills rehearsing the plans.

"It's one thing to have a plan, another to train for and exercise it," Smith said. "There will be a lot of people scared, but if we're proactive we'll save a lot of lives because we're ready. Because we do the collaboration, police and firefighters know who to contact and where to go in an emergency. There have been a lot of things in my life I've been in charge of, but this has been the most challenging. I didn't go to school to learn how to deal with a nuclear attack, but I'm out there learning."

HAZARDOUS

MATERIALS

On the first Tuesday of each month a group of volunteers gathers in a small room at the Carmichael Center in Searcy to work out how citizens of White County can be notified about hazardous materials in our area.

Working with city services and agencies already in place, the volunteers are developing plans to cope with local emergencies of all kinds.

It could be a chemical spill, as happened in Conway. Searcy forces were quickly there to help with a decontamination trailer bought by White County with Homeland Security money, but with an agreement to assist in hazardous material accidents anywhere in White County. In this case, Searcy went beyond the agreement, marking the extraordinary cooperation between agencies and forces to rescue citizens in danger.

It could be a flood or an earthquake, a biological threat, a train derailment or a terrorist attack. The Local Emergency Planning Commission (LEPC) is networking city, state and national resources to provide a communications web and a safety net for county residents.

The LEPC volunteers are nurses, city and county administrators, police officers and fire fighters, First Responders, health workers and communications experts, and the list goes on. But the person who put the commission in gear is Rogers.

"In March '02, I started reviewing the city's emergency plan," he said. "It needed a few updates, like emergency contact numbers." But it wasn't until that November that the ball started rolling.

"I approached Chief Bill Baldridge and he told me to press on," Rogers said. "I invited both hospitals and the emergency medical service to a meeting. At that time, we didn't have an emergency planning commission, so I approached Judge Parish and said we needed an LEPC. He agreed and asked me to chair the commission. At that point, our focus shifted to the county emergency plan. The city was already being updated through the city administrators, and now it's in working order."

"We discovered we were in bad shape. The plan was still about trying to protect ourselves from Titan missiles," said Julie Smith, A White County Medical Center nurse serving as secretary for the LEPC.

Rogers and the core of volunteers divided the commission into committees to study a variety of areas - fire protection, law enforcement, planning and development, industrial outreach, training and more. They also began working toward a countywide emergency plan to submit to ADEM, which granted them $10,000 for equipment and expenses to prepare the revision.

"We had to have a plan in place by Dec. 1 in order to have our grant from Homeland Security to get equipment like chemical protective units," said Smith.

HOMETOWN HEALTH

The LPEC works in collaboration with numerous agencies. Berta Crow works for the Arkansas Health Department as the "Hometown Health Administrator" for White County and the bioterrorism contact for LEPC.

"The Health Department's plan is for biological disasters. If there isn't that, we will play any role LEPC needs," Crow said. "If they need people to man different areas in storms, an earthquake or a tornado, it will be announced over the media. The State Department will notify me and I will notify the county judge, who is responsible for execution of their plan."

The Health Department might come into play if there is a flood and danger from mosquitos on standing water, she said. She also had to prepare in November 2002 for a small pox scare.

"I had to have a plan in place to give 70,000 doses of vaccine in five days. We had clinics every 6 weeks and gave immunizations to any medical personnel who agreed and didn't have compromised health systems," Crow said. "We gave 150 doses altogether in the county. The last time smallpox had been given as routine immunization was '72. Now, we're working on a mass immunization plan for anthrax. We need prophylactic medication."

This is an example of how the LPEC piggy-backs onto other agencies:

"I had to write the plan for an emergency immunization program for the Health Department, and we were able to contribute that to LEPC," Crow said.

Likewise, Marie Tipton and her partner Jeremy Covington are also part of the White County's plan running the new Citizens Emergency Response Team program. They are CERT trainers for White County Office of Emergency Services, meaning they can train ordinary citizens to respond to emergencies even before First Responders teams get there.

The idea is that while professional emergency services are getting to a crisis, First Responders are already there providing basic CPR help. Now, even they can be preceded by citizens on the scene.

"We'll set up a local CERT captain in each city or town and buy backpacks supplied with hardhats, emergency vests, gas/water shutoff tools, gloves, safety goggles and other equipments," Swanson said.

Tipton has just completed the first mission, in Letona March 18-20.

"We taught 10 volunteers about fire suppression with extinguishers, light search and rescue such as going through buildings to find victims, and how to identify biological or chemical hazards. We taught how to turn off gas and water mains, then we went through mock exercises," Tipton said.

She and Covington have also been speaking to neighborhood watch groups in Searcy about how to operate safely.

Jay Shock, administrative assistant to the mayor in Searcy, has also been attending LEPC meetings. Searcy police and firefighters have training in the use of hazardous material equipment - a "HAZMAT" team - but the Homeland Security grant funding comes to White County. So the detox trailer was bought with that money but is operated by Searcy professionals, who are on call to take it wherever it is needed.

"Say there's a train derailment in Bald Knob," Shock said. "There's a community agreement that Searcy would run equipment up there."

The formal agreement specifies that if Searcy forces respond to hazardous material emergencies in White County for two years, the equipment purchased through the grant by White County will be transferred to Searcy ownership Dec. 31, 2005.

COMMUNITY

RIGHT TO KNOW

Primarily, however, Rogers is in involved in making LPEC a reporting agency to the public.

"Congress passed CRTK (the Community Right to Know Act) that includes reporting what hazardous materials are stored where," he said. "It may be farm supplies like fertilizer. Within 24 hours of an individual asking us, 'What does ABC industry have in terms of reportable quantities?' An aerosol can of chlorine gas might be reportable. Most water treatment facilities inject chlorine and have to report it. A manufacturing plant might use acid.

"We are a public reporting system for hazardous materials, a liaison between private industries (nitric acid, people who make metal products, vehicle parts) and the public."

Working hand-in-hand with Rogers and the LEPC is the man hired to coordinate virtually all White County emergency services. Eric Swanson is the White County emergency services coordinator, the 9-1-1 coordinator, the rural fire department coordinator and the expert experts go to.

Swanson is the resources chairman for LEPC, compiling information about where people displaced by catastrophes can find assistance. He has the contacts in other counties, plus local contacts, for where people can get emergency food rations.

He can also locate the facilities that can temporarily house evacuees. The White County Medical Center's Hubach Conference Center, for instance, can hold 500 people, and was used to shelter people during the '99 tornado in Beebe.

And Swanson knows other resources.

"It's a very, very long list," Swanson said. The people in White County are phenomenal. When anything happens to anybody in this community, there's a tremendous outpouring of help."

Like everyone working in emergency services, Swanson knows that the best preparedness is personal, and that people will help themselves if properly informed.

FEMA, now part of Homeland Security in this huge web of acronymed agencies, funnels money to ADEM to encourage people to build storm shelters.

And Swanson's the one who inspects the 800 new storms shelters.

The upside to disasters is that they alert people how to get ready for the next one.

"We were never ill-prepared in terms of force, but we were in terms of a plan. I don't think it's living in fear to prepare. It's living in reality," Crow said.