OCTOBER 31, 2005
COMMISSIONERS COURT SPEECH
The department of emergency management operations is paid over $100,000 a year in order for this county to be prepared for the unexpected should it occur. And this year it did. However this department didn’t know everything it should have until we experienced the evacuees from katrina and the mobilization of various disaster relief organizations, and now the decisions of debris clean up.
It seems that all the department of emergency management had to do was read the web site of the United States corps of engineers. It is easy to find you just google the name.
Click on texas division of emergency management, rita, there you will find public assistance forms and information, and debris hotline and fact sheet that includes debris removal information. Everything this county needed to know and prepare for emergencies. There is a 1 800 hotline and fax line specifically for governments and the fema phone number which is seldom answered
It tells you about eligible costs, use of contractors, time and material contracts, in eligible contracts, monitoring documentation and other things.
There is a USACE debris mission assistance statement dated October 1, 2005. all our EMO department had to do was read it. They are very clear on the rules to be followed. The statement is interesting. it is specific with number of days deadlines, the 75 and 25 percentages of reimbursement femas part and the local government responsibility, AND how to retain a 100% reimbursement from the federal government.
This is done by contracting with USACE before the deadline FEMA sets, is up. In this case 34 days.
If our EMO department had read this information there wouldn’t have been so much controversy and confusion associated with the clean up operation. We could have avoided the anxiety driven discussions deadline after deadline and upsetting the public with constant questions of how will we get this cleaned up?
We could have avoided putting 200 people out of a job. All the emergency management operations department had to do was read the web site, take immediate action before the deadline, or we could have contracted with the United States Corps of Army Engineers before hurricane rita hit. Other counties did this and they are not having the problems we are.
Hopefully EMO will learn from this and be completely prepared for any disaster emergency should it occur in the future. That’s what we pay them for.