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LOCAL EMERGENCY PLANNING COMMITTEE Minutes

May 15, 2008

Members present Don Button, Vivian Button, Dan Bynum, John Crosby, Richard Everett, Roger Gardner, Todd Hampton, Nahum Manzano, Matt Mercer, James Spooner, Randy McCauley and Frank Goldsby.

Chairman Don Button called the meeting to order at 12:15 PM. Motion to approve the minutes to the last meeting was made by John Crosby. Motion was seconded by Roger Gardner with a correction to correct the next meeting date from May 21 to May 15.

Matt Mercer explained the call out procedures for the Incident Management Team (IMT).  When a county request the IMT, they contact their Emergency Management Coordinator who then contacts Kansas Division of Emergency Management.  KDEM then contacts the team manager. Each region has an Incident Management Team.  The Southwest Region has three basic teams made up 9 people from Fire Departments, Emergency Medical Services, Emergency Management, City and County Government, Law Enforcement and private industry. Each team is on call for a month at a time. They do not go in to take over but to help point the county in the right direction.  The full team may not be called out, just the needed members.

Alan Olson, Matt Mercer and Don Button attended the Interoperable Communication Committee meeting in Salina on May 12^th.   This meeting was attended by 65 people from around the state.  All radio communications equipment will have to be narrow banded by 2010.  Any radios and repeater older than 5 years will probably have to be replaced.  Don has asked all departments to list their radio equipment and repeaters by make, model, number on hand, number needed, mobile and hand held and get this information to him as he is developing a plan to start changing over radios now to help offset the cost of doing this at one time.  Now is the time to start looking as departments start figuring budgets for next year.

Don asked if anyone had any questions about our Local Emergency Operations Plan.  It has been approved by the state.  Each department head and all Elected Officials have to sign off on the plan before we can put it into effect.  If there is something you have a question about or cannot do, we need to revise that part now before it is signed into law.  Because once it is approved and signed by all and we have a disaster it becomes law.

The Grant County Fair is July 19 thru July 26.  Don asked the department heads if they would like to have Fair Booths together again like we have in the past.  John Crosby stated he would.  Don will talk to Jerry Jo Deckert, Lance Babcock and Alan Olson.

Don has received the EMPG Grant Funds to complete Resource Typing for the county/city.  FEMA has their categories and we will need a list of all equipment owned by the city and county to match it to the FEMA categories.   This will be put on spread sheets.  Don would also like to include private industries in this resource typing.

Community Emergency Response Team completed training on April 26, with an exercise.  We have applied for grant funds to purchase equipment.  We are developing a cert ID card and certificate     

Richard Everett stated the health departments will be having a table top exercise on July 15 in Hugoton.

Jim Spooner stated he would like to encourage volunteerism.

John Crosby stated they had not had as many fire as he thought they might since it has been so dry.  The Fire Department has been helping out at BP.

Randy McCauley wanted to make sure all of the people at the meeting and their companies knew about Stop sign swap at Stubbs and Patterson and Stubbs and Hampton.  Stubbs does not stop now.  They have put up rumble strips, and flashing lights and flags to call attention to these locations.  KDOT is resurfacing Highway 25 North and then will resurface Highway 160 to Johnson.

Nahum Manzano stated BP has been doing a lot with the turnaround at the Jayhawk Plant and rerouting gas to different locations. They have also been working on their plants starting with the North Plant and working their way south.

Todd Hampton talked about the Drainage Project at the Hospital.  It will cause some closing of Nebraska and Kansas Avenues as they move utilities and work on the drainage.  Work is still progressing at the Ethanol Plant.  Wal-Mart has not set a schedule for construction.  The lake is filling up it is about 6 or 7 feet in the center.  Spruce Street will be closed to Highway 160 and turning lanes will be put in at Cedar Street which is the proposed entrance to Wal-Mart.  KDOT is also considering other options at Cedar Street and Highway 160, possibly a stop light or speed limit changes.

John Crosby also stated emergency services would have to do some special training for the lake such as water rescue and ice rescue and look at additional equipment.

The next meeting is scheduled for June 19 but because of several members being unavailable on that date the date was changed to June 26 at 12 Noon at the Fire Department.

Roger Gardner made a motion to adjourn.  Randy McCauley seconded.  Motion carried.

The meeting was adjourned at 1:10 PM

Submitted by Vivian Button