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| Winter weather brings 'what ifs' |
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| News | |||
| Written by Robin Hixson | |||
| Friday, 19 December 2008 09:00 | |||
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When winter weather brings snow and ice, people tend to think about preparing for emergency situations. What if ice causes an extended power outage? What if I’m stranded? What about food? Miami County Sheriff Frank Kelly, who is head of emergency preparedness for the county, answered those questions Wednesday. First, he explained that emergency preparedness does not oversee or control other agencies, but acts as a resource. When ice storms caused week-long power outages in the early 2000s, emergency preparedness worked with cities throughout the county, the Salvation Army, the American Red Cross, and various churches to provide help for area residents. After arranging with the churches, the agencies worked together to set up shelters at those locations. “That’s how we handled it, and that’s how we’d handle it if it were to occur tomorrow: Get with the schools and churches, because they have the resources, the facilities, the bathrooms,” he said. “If it’s a major incident, the schools and the churches have kitchens that we could utilize. The Red Cross and the Salvation Army would come in and oversee things.” As for people being stranded in their homes out in the county, Kelly said local bus services would be called upon, but four-wheel-drive vehicles might take as much as a week to round up, so people would need to dress warmly and use fireplaces, if they have them, to keep warm until help arrived. “But we wouldn’t leave anybody stranded if they needed help,” he said. “When the elderly out in the county have a problem, EMS (Emergency Medical Services) would go out and check on them and transport them, if they needed to be transported. Everybody works together.”
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