New disaster readiness policies have been enacted at the April 17, 2007 Mamakating town board meeting. The 42-page Emergency Management Plan (EMP) outlines command and control guidelines, detailing how local law would be superceded by emergency orders during a breakdown of public services. Mamakating Supervisor Charles Penna said that Wurtsboro village would be passing their own EMP at a special meeting later the same evening. Bloomingburg Mayor Everett Saunders said his village would adopt their EMP on May 10.

Known scenarios which might call for special emergency management include: terrorism, flood, ice storm, transportation accident, fire, utility failure, severe storm, displaced persons, earthquake, tornado, epidemic, structural collapse, explosion, ice jam, and hazmat in transit.

Penna addressed the town board. "The emergency management plan is done. There's one resolution to adopt this. And then there's another potential resolution that this thing can be changed on the recommendation of the emergency management director (if and when we get one); the town supervisor; or the fire chiefs. Depending on the situation, they have to be able to change this immediately, if it wasn't covered in this document. This is a composite of maybe four or five towns, and we tried to take the best out of each town."

The EMP is to be reviewed on an annual basis. "Every year, you're required by law, it's not a free choice, to meet with the emergency management people, who are basically the fire chiefs, your ambulance corps, and the highway superintendent, to have two or three meetings per year to discuss."

Under the guidelines, the town supervisor can enact what basically amounts to martial law. "Now, I'm going to leave it up to the fire chiefs at some point to recommend somebody to be the emergency management coordinator. It shouldn't be a town board decision, because I know I'm not myself qualified to make this decision, and I don't know how much experience any other board member has in making these kinds of decisions. They're the experts, not us."

Penna explained, "This would be a town appointment, but personally, while I'm here, I'm not being insulting to the board, I don't feel any of us are qualified to determine that person, and I think the chief and the ambulance squad should be the people to make the recommendations to the board on who that person should be." Addressing the emergency responders in attendance, he continued, "You're the ones that have gone to school, you're the ones that are out on the front line, we're not."

Mamakating's EMP calls for the formation of an Emergency Services Committee to oversee the plan: comprised of the town supervisor, the highway superintendent, the town clerk, the town council, local fire chiefs, senior officer at the state police, the town health officer, and the president of the ambulance corps. It also sets forth an Incident Command System (ICS) to interface with county, state and federal responders; and Standard Operating Guides (SOG) for all municipal agencies.

Regarding training and certification, "We fall under the county guidelines," Penna indicated. "This is a whole series of classes and procedures that we've been attending for two years now. If an emergency occurs, what the state wants you to do, and FEMA, is to be able to handle a situation for at least three days to two weeks. If it's an ice storm, Route 17's cut off, or the flooding like we had the other day, we almost had to isolate the village of Wurtsboro, you should be able to take care of some things yourself, until help can arrive. The objective of this plan is just guidelines on the procedures that are to be followed. All the responsibility falls on the town supervisor, the supervisor has to be able to hand it off to people that know what they're doing."

The position of emergency management coordinator will be voluntary this year, because it has not been included in the current budget. Next year's budget may allocate a part-time salary or stipend. Sullivan County guidelines dictate the coordinator's qualifications. "He's going to be in charge of the chiefs," Penna stressed. "That's why it's so important they have their say on who this person is. If we decide on somebody who can't work with them, that's a nightmare."

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