by Kelly Hubbard, County Office of Emergency Management
I wanted to give a huge kudos to an amazing document that
Molly and Ernesto spearheaded on behalf of the County. The County in
partnership with American Red Cross, cities and other local partners have been
working on our plans to support the community if we had an evacuation in a
COVID environment. Molly, in association with her role within the EOC as
the coordinator of evacuation shelters, has been a huge partner and leader in
this effort.
The Temporary Evacuation Point Directory reflects a multi-agency and multi-department effort. However, this critical information would not have been developed into such a well laid out comprehensive tool, if it was not for Molly and Ernesto’s work. Many counties have already had the difficult experience of having to evacuate during COVID; thankfully we have not. I am confident that we are significantly more ready for this should the need arise, because of the information this tool provides to make good decisions when needed. This is a wonderful head start to a Multi-Agency County-Wide Care Facility Plan (think evacuation, warming centers, local assistance centers, cooling centers, etc.) that OEM has received grant funds to develop.
Lastly, I plan to share this document with other Emergency Managers across the state as a best practice resource for others to utilize as a template. (Yep, it’s that good of a document!)