Eastern Panhandle residents learn how to be ready for disaster

September is National Preparedness Month, and Jefferson County Homeland Security and Emergency Management reached out to citizens about how to prepare your home and family if a disaster strikes.

Classes are being offered by Jefferson County Homeland Security and Emergency Management to answer that question. The classes were held at the Charles Town Library in the County Commission Meeting Room.

Topics included how to prepare for disasters, how to build a family disaster kit, how to put together a family disaster plan, how to sign up for Jefferson County Emergency Alerts and how to fill out the Preparedness Survey.

“The whole reason we do this is to save the people heartache on the other side of a storm,” Barbara Miller, Director/Emergency Manager for Jefferson County Homeland Security and Emergency Management, said.

In a real-world situation and in training, Miller works out of a command center. The heads of many agencies and departments will join together as a team to do what is best for those affected by a disaster, she said.

“We go into 12-hour shifts, so everybody gets to sleep occasional, theoretically,” Miller said with a laugh.

The team knows its hard work and high pressure during a disaster.

“I was in Greenbrier County last year (during floods) and it’s such a smaller area down there, and we worked for about 19 hours and went and got a couple hours shut eye and went back to work. That’s the reality of it,” Miller said.

She knows how hard an event can get. She and her team were also operating for long hours during the snow storm of 2010.

They train for the worst of the worst and have backup plans for almost anything.

“We actually have a ham radio operator that sits in the EOC (Emergency Operations Center) with us anytime that we are activated,” Miller said.

Now her office is offering classes to help people be prepared for any event that may restrict their mobility or health.

Flooding in the south has shown what works and areas that have broken down.

Sometimes panic can be spread by posting things on social media that aren’t true, Miller said.

“We have seen a lot of that coming out of Harvey this week. There were pictures of the airport underwater. That was not a real picture. When there is a disaster going on please use official sources to get your information otherwise you’re going to get a lot of rumors,” Miller said.

Brandon Vallee Public Information Officer /Volunteer Coordinator for Jefferson County Homeland Security and Emergency Management holds a class for county employees and the general public.

“We want to get out in the community and teach about emergency preparedness,” Vallee said.

He informed the audience of an alert system that residents can sign up for that will notify them of many different threats to their community.

“It can be by cell phone, email and it also posts to the Jefferson County Homeland Security Facebook page, Twitter account and website,” Vallee said.

It’s free to the user and can be customized to receive only the alerts that are wanted. “They can choose what things they want to get. Maybe if you’re a farmer a frost alert might be important to you, but if I’m lying in my bed trying to sleep in I really don’t care. So you can pick and choose which ones you want to be alerted for,” Miller said.

“Be aware of what you are at risk from as well as what’s going on at the moment and if it gets into a situation where we are actually setting up shelters and things like that we do put that in information in,” Miller said.

Jefferson County Homeland Security and Emergency Management office is also conducting a confidential, online survey.

“I encourage you all to take this survey. We’re going to run it through the month of September, and we want to figure out where Jefferson County is in emergency preparedness and that will help us with our operation plan,”Vallee said.

“It’s a survey for National Preparedness Month. It is only 14 questions and it takes about three minutes for the average person to complete. Some of the questions are do you have a family disaster kit and if the answers to that are yes then does it also include your pets? You want to make sure that they are taken care of. It asks if you have developed a disaster plan? Do you have a place to go if you had to evacuate your home for some reason? Those are the kind of questions that are on that survey. What we are using it for is to (tailor) our training that we do in the future. If we find out that 60 percent of the people have kits but only 20 percent have plans, then we adjust our plans,” Miller said.

It also helps them understand the best way to reach people.

“That’s the overwhelming response that we are getting from people in the survey. They want text messages,” Miller said.

The training can be presented in many places and recent disasters have homeowners wanting to know how to be ready.

“Just yesterday there was a lady from one of the homeowner’s associations that got in touch with (Brandon) and said ‘We’re having a meeting. Can you come and speak at it and do handouts?’ We’ll talk to them anytime. They’re more apt to listen to us right now,” Miller said.

For people that cannot attend a class or those wanting information about when and where a class is at or to learn how to just be prepared answers are available, Miller said, “They can go to our website which is www.jeffersoncountywv.org they can go to ready.gov which is a FEMA website which has a host of information on there. It good to have supplies on hand and not wait until the last minute to go out and buy those things and get their prescriptions filled and make sure they’ve got what they need for the elderly, stock up on water and food,” Miller said.

To participate in the survey go to www.surveymonkey.com/r/JCHSEM2017.

The Jefferson County Homeland Security and Emergency Management office trains for many different types of threats to the community. Drills, classroom training, public training all take time, but in the end, it could save lives.

“I have been doing this for a long time, and I have never seen two disasters alike,” Miller said.