Department reorganization improved flood response
Dec. 24—When Haywood County reorganized its emergency services department several years back, it combined emergency management, which was a single director, with the emergency medical services to vastly increase the department resources.
The decision paid off big-time this fall when disaster in the form of massive flooding along the Pigeon River hit Haywood.
The merger "definitely benefitted us here during the floods," said Travis Donaldson, the county's EMS director. "We were able to spread the workload among several staff and folks stepped up."
Emergency responses typically involve fire departments, search and rescue and a host of other community partners, from utility providers to transportation officials to medical facilities to municipalities.
The Tropical Storm Fred response brought in personnel through the state's Emergency Management function, but it was Haywood officials who managed the incident.
"The way emergency management works in North Carolina is locals are the ones in charge and the state is here to provide support and backfill with what we need," Donaldson said. "Post disaster, the state comes in on the recovery because they have more resources and experience. Our role was to manage the chaos and make things as less chaotic as possible at the time."
Donaldson said the county disaster team is using the experience as a primer to figure out the gaps in the response and put together plans to address them in the future.
"Looking back at the response, I think we did well overall considering the size and scope of the disaster itself," he said. "But we can always improve or do better so we're working on identifying the lessons learned. Our partners did very well, and our staff did very well."
