Grant helps city, county prepare for disaster

City of Portales and Roosevelt County personnel said they benefited from a federal grant for vulnerability assessments in Roosevelt County.

The equipment and training purchased through grant monies will be used to form vulnerability assessments teams in Roosevelt County, said Keith Wattenbarger, Portales and Roosevelt County Emergency Management Director.

Training helps to identify strengths and weaknesses of area businesses and buildings in the event of a disaster, Wattenbarger said.

“This will increase our ability to effectively manage a natural or industrial disaster,” Wattenbager said. “Severe weather is a part of our lives here in the eastern plains. A part of this training will help us to continue operations and provide services in the city even if a storm took out residences or business.” 

The $32,000 grant for communities with under 50,000 residents through the Department of Homeland Security — communities with law enforcement and emergency responder agencies not currently eligible for funding through the Department’s Urban Areas Security Initiative grant program.

Of nearly 1,000 applications from 40 states, 109 grants were awarded, Wattenbarger said.

Equipment for classifying and compiling assessment data was included with the grant; a laptop computer, camera and range finder can be used in the process.

Members of the police, fire, EMS, sheriff’s office and Roosevelt General Hospital staff completed a three-day training seminar with DOH personnel on Friday.

“I took a lot away from the seminar,” Wattenbarger said. “They helped us to define and re-define priority sites in and around our community.”

 Wattenbarger said that during the seminar, the Campus Union Building at Eastern New Mexico University was assessed.

 The fire department talked about the ventilation of the building, the police discussed the security, and the hospital staff looked into emergency shelter possibilities.

“Each building and business in Roosevelt County will have to assessed individually,” Wattenbarger said. “Each building has different potential and hazards and no one building can be treated the same.”

The training can also be used to identify buildings that can be utilized as emergency shelters, said Tammy Phillips, emergency director for RGH.

“It will take the efforts of the entire community to make it through a disaster,” Phillips said. “With the training, we began to look at the local sources for the supplies that would be needed to make it through a disaster.”

Phillips said that the training helps to identify food, water and supplies that could be available if the city was cut off from help for a few days.

A team to do other assessments throughout the county is in the works, and Wattenbarger said the goal is to have the team formed by the end of 2008.