EMERGENCY PLANNING INFORMATION

Washington County reportedly had 14 approved or drafts of Emergency Management Plans totaling 1,318 pages on July 21, 2006.  The shortest plan, the Cold Weather Plan, reportedly consisted of 5 pages.  The longest plan, the Hazardous Materials Plan, reportedly consisted of 296 pages.

I have lived in Washington County for 30 years and until a few months ago I had never seen a single page of any of the county’s emergency plans.  I still have no idea what to expect from county employees in the event of any emergency.  And I doubt if 2% of the county’s residents could even name three of the emergency plans after reading this message (which contains the names of two of the plans in the first paragraph).

The right time to inform the public of the contents of the emergency plans is before an emergency happens.  This has not been done.  I doubt if the county will make any attempt to inform the residents of the contents of the emergency plans during an emergency.  Furthermore, the residents have no idea whether or not the county’s emergency plans are excellent or are worse than useless.

County residents should not be kept uninformed of the basic information contained in the emergency plans that the county’s taxpayers already paid for.  This information could mean the difference between life and death.

The County Commissioners have failed to inform county residents of information that could save their lives or the lives of their loved ones during an emergency.  The county has a website and the county sends out property tax bills every year to thousands of residents.  While I don’t expect the county to post all 1,318 pages on the website or mail all 1,318 pages with the property tax bills, the county could easily do a little bit more to inform the residents than the NOTHING the county has done for at least the last 30 years.

Since no one can predict when an emergency will happen, the distribution of emergency planning information should have a high priority, not a NO priority.

Daniel Moeller