Intern Insight- Week 6 and 7

The last couple of weeks here have been quite busy. The beginning of last week started off with me working in the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) the entire day. I had to work on combining all of the debris management information that I had gathered over the last week and begin to put it into one common template that all the other emergency plans follow. These plans make it extremely easy for the EOC and 911 Center to contact who they need to in a timely manner and follow the step by step directions that are provided to ensure cleanup after a disaster is quickly accomplished. It took me a good week and a half to acquire all of the information that I have now; everything from waste disposal companies, to federal regulations on what the county is allowed to dispose of and how to do it properly. Many individuals believe you can just take all of the accumulated debris and haul it off in one dumpster. Unfortunately, by doing that you could be causing much more harm than good and just adding to the problems that you already have.

Starting off my next week I was allowed to attend a meeting with Eric and Connie at the Cumberland County Court House. The meeting involved getting together with a couple of the Information Technology guys and going over the new NARM (Notification and Resource Manual) version. Connie and Eric developed the idea of the NARM. It is an amazing database that allows any of the employees to search vendors, facilities, and other employees so they can easily get in contact and with them and have the information they need when working on other projects and plans. As I mention time and time again, timing is everything when it comes to Emergency Management. This new version of the database just has a few changes from the old one and allows for a much more organized search process. The rest of the week I will be working on my emergency debris management plan and I hope to have it finished within a couple days. My time here at the Cumberland County Department of Public Safety is beginning to come to an end and I want to make sure that I demonstrate everything that I have learned into this plan before these last 2 weeks.

Learn more about the Intern Insight here!