Emergency Management

First of all, I would like to “Thank you” for visiting the APWA Emergency Management Committee website. Our membership in 2011-2012 consists of representatives from a broad spectrum of professional expertise and jurisdictional sizes from Arizona to New England. Each one of the Emergency Management members has devoted countless hours representing APWA to ensure and strengthen public works by participating in over a dozen federal coalitions, task forces and workgroups.

Last year an APWA Presidential Task Force (the Emergency Management Think Tank) was appointed with an overall mission to make recommendations to the APWA Board of Directors in developing a pathway to best position APWA and its membership in becoming a leader in national emergency management activities. At their June 2011 meeting, the Board of Directors approved the recommendations presented in the Think Tank Final Report and directed the Emergency Management Committee to formulate a process and timeline for addressing the recommendations.  Through our network of subcommittees we are diligently working to address individual recommendations which will result in the release of several new programs and initiatives.  Watch the web site and infoNOW for announcements.

Several years ago FEMA brought select APWA members to their EMI campus to evaluate gaps in training for public works professionals.   As a result of their recommendations, FEMA allocated funds to develop four on-line training programs.  Members of APWA have been working with contractors to evaluate components of the new training.   In December, 2010, the first of the programs, IS-552 - The Public Works Role in Emergency Management, was released.  We anticipate a second program IS-556 Damage Assessment for Public Works, will be released by year’s end (2011).  The remaining two programs, IS-554 Emergency Planning for Public Works and IS-558 Public Works and Disaster Recovery are in the evaluation and development stages.  Watch infoNOW and the APWA web site for updates.

The committee members recognize there is still much work to be done in getting public works professionals recognized for our role as first responders. We believe it is important for all members to acknowledge their role as a first responder by coming to the table with other first responders to ensure our agencies can mitigate, prepare, respond and recover from incidents to the best of our ability. In light of that we highly encourage agencies to become compliant with NIMS. To find out more about NIMS’ requirements go to http://www.fema.gov/emergency/nims/ImplementationGuidanceStakeholders.shtm.

If you would like to be involved in the work of the Emergency Management Committee or one of the subcommittees, please contact me (walshc@ci.beloit.wi.us) or any of the other committee members.