A lot of emergency management organizations and the emergency response teams have what it takes to respond in the event of a catastrophic event. When the event is over, what is the responsibility of those entities?
Marshall County Emergency Management Agency Director Clyde Avery attended a long term recovery seminar this week where he learned ways communities can rebound after a disaster. He says partnerships need to be developed and plans implemented now in case of an event.
“The long term recovery is specific to more significant disasters or catastrophic incidents which thankfully we don’t deal a lot with,” said Avery. “We still may have smaller incidents or events that occur that can still impact communities. We need to look at developing a plan that kind of covers those types of recovery efforts as well.”
For example, Avery says one partnership that would be created would be with the Economic Development Corporation.
“We want businesses to stay in the community after a disaster occurs so that we can keep people here and keep them working. We would be reaching out to elected officials and non-government organizations to help develop a plan to fulfill the unmet needs of folks that may have been impacted by that disaster.”
Avery notes that emergency preparedness is everyone’s responsibility. He encourages everyone to be ready to deal with any disaster in the event it happens.
