Sherman Greer, Director of the Evansville- Vanderburgh County Emergency Management Agency along with John Pease, a volunteer in Logistics Support for the local EMA will travel to New York to aid in Hurricane Sandy relief efforts today.
Greer and Pease will join 5 other trained professionals from District Ten of the Indiana Department of Homeland Security in Indianapolis at 6 pm today and deploy to New York for a 14 day mission in and around the Long island area. They will be joined by Tonda Dixon, EMA Director in Pike County, Stephanie McKinney, EMA Administrative Assistant in Gibson County, Al Perdue, EMA Director in Spencer County, Dallas Scott, EMA Director in Warrick County, and Kent Winkler, Assistant Fire Chief in Princeton Fire Territory.
District Ten is made up of 12 counties: Crawford, Daviess, Dubois, Gibson, Knox, Martin, Pike, Perry, Posey, Spencer, Vanderburgh and Warrick. District Response Task Force Ten Incident Management Team personnel are being activated along with District Response Task Force One from northwestern Indiana which includes Lake County and the State Incident Management Assistance Team to join Incident Management Teams which provide command and control functions.
NIMS (National Incident Command Systems) is a FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) certified emergency management system used across the U.S. to coordinate preparedness, incident management, and response among public and private sectors. By using this system trained people can plan, prepare, prevent, mitigate, respond and recover from incidents of any size, cause, location, or complexity, to reduce loss of life and property and harm to our environment. NIMS enables trained government, not–for–profit, and private sector responders from across the country to work side by side during any incident in a predictable and coordinated manner, because the terminology, structure, process and procedure is standardized.
Hurricane Sandy made landfall October 29, 2012. Government, not for profit, and private sector employees and volunteers in the impacted communities made sure their families were safe and immediately opened Incident Command Centers. It was clear this incident was too massive to be handled locally and responders and outside resources were needed. Persons from nearby areas not impacted by the storm were mobilized. Now, 12 days after landfall, resources from further west are deploying to aid in response and recovery. Like any workplace, staff changes are necessary at the end of operational periods. To preserve staff health and well-being, breaks, sleep, food, and time away are vital. The seven people from southwestern Indiana will join people from other Districts across the country to provide the needed trained backup.
