Staff Writer

The Claiborne County Local Emergency Planning Commission (LEPC) held the monthly meeting at the Justice Center on Thursday, June 28. David Breeding, EMA Director) told the group that all FEMA distributions are now on public record. Any entity receiving money from FEMA will be listed on a public document.

Carl McDaniel, Regional TEMA Director, presented an overview of a recent Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program (EMAT) for the state. The program documents potential hazards based on history, population and other parameters. Some items reviewed include forest fires, earthquakes, terrorism, civil disturbances, and several other categories of hazards. Details are available at www.epa.gov.

David Breeding recapped local compliance with the National Incident Management System (NIMS). All cities and counties must be compliant with NIMS by October 1 of this year. According to Breeding the town of Harrogate is currently about 85 percent compliant. Tazewell, New Tazewell, and Cumberland Gap have zero compliance. Tazewell Mayor Steve Vass pointed out that the city has completed some of the requirements but that records of compliance have not been forwarded to Breeding. Other cities may be in the same situation. The county is about 74 percent compliant if the cities are not figured into the equation. Breeding plans to conduct NIMS 300 and NIMS400 classes in September for emergency action leaders. The classes for levels 100, 200, 700, and 800 are available online at www.fema.gov. Failure to comply with the NIMS requirements could lead to a complete stop of federal money into a community or county.

Charles Turner of the health department provided a synopsis of lessons learned at the June 7 regional pandemic exercise held in Knoxville. Several issues were itemized including: need for more community education; mental health planning; communications planning; need for more county level official participation; and planning for special needs people. Action steps identified included organizing faith-based organizations and developing continuity of operations plans for business. Turner said a similar local level workshop would be scheduled in the future. "We've got a start. There is still a lot of work to be done," he said.

E-911 Director Roger Hager reported that the emergency notification system is scheduled to be installed in the 911 center on July 17-19. The system will permit rapid notification of specific groups in case of emergency. As a final action the commission voted to provide minutes of the LEPC meetings to each municipal government office in the county.

The LEPC will meet again on July 26 at 1:30 p.m. All government, health, and business leaders are invited as well as anyone involved in providing emergency services.

Ed Baldwin is a staff writer for the Claiborne Progress. He may be reached via e-mail at ebaldwin@claiborneprogress.net.