Does the Heightened Security Risk Scale really present a viable assessment of the actual risk to our country? What happenes when they raise the level from yellow to orange and then the next step is red? Someone has even suggested we make several more colors between yellow and red. The suggestion has been to make a deep orange or a darker orange. Those possibilities will best be left to politicians. Seems like the more colors we place in there the more time we spend waiting for something to happen.

    We wanted to know what plans had been made or were being made to protect us with the Office of Emergency Services,
so a call placed to the number in the phone book produced an eventual calling of Bob Parish's office. The judge stated that, "I have not been invited to any meetings for prepardness." Parish stated that Stan Rogers, local fireman, is the current planning coordinator. Parish said there is currently no plan on the books that would help White County in the event of an emergency related to terrorism. He stated, "If we had a plan we would probably be one of the only counties in the state to have a plan." Parish went on to say that the newly elected 911 board is a non-partisan group that will be responsible for selecting a new OES officer. The new officer will be in charge of centralizing all of the emergency services and helping to get a viable plan that will work for our county and city.

    To that end YES Searcy does have or maybe we should say is having a plan that will direct not only emergencies related to tornadoes and ice storms but will assist in the new terroristic threats in the world today. Many areas of the country are going to be needed in the new plan. That includes the City of Searcy and other cities in the state.

    Mayor Belinda LaForce said, "We are in preparation of the plan. We haven't had to go through the drills of times when we had bomb shelters. 9-1-1 caught everyone totally by surprise. We are as prepared as we can be at this time. To be totally prepared (for every possible cintingency) would be totally impossible." But the mayor said we are planning for the future. We do have a mobile command center and have the police, fire and volunteers on line ready to do their jobs.

   After looking at the possibilities of chemical warfare in the White County area it seems like such a remote possibility. Dut anything can happen and is possible. Most of the people I talked to said they were not going to live their life differently in the coming days because we don't really know what is going to happen