I have been the Director of Garfield County Emergency Management for the last 14 years and the Director of Enid Emergency Management for the last 5. The County side of my job is Volunteer and the City side is a paid position. I am command level trained as are several on my staff. I am also the Chairman of Tri-County Emergency Services and the Northwest Area Vice-President representing the Oklahoma Emergency  Management Association.

I oversee a spotter network that is dedicated to the protection of our citizens. They include all the Rural Fire Departments, Sheriff Reserve and full time Deputies, some State Troopers with OHP, and of course our center personnel with GCEM. These people are all volunteers in this one area of protection that we consider very important. We work very closely with The National Weather Service and have several open lines of communication with them during weather events.

There are many areas to Emergency Management that I keep up with in training and I train many emergency services personnel in several areas. The key elements of Emergency Management are to Prepare for, Respond to, Mitigate and Recover from Disaster events. I have come to know that no matter how much we prepare, we will never be completely ready. This isn’t because of a lack of planning, it’s because we can’t see everything that could possibly go wrong in any given situation. We have meetings and training and go over all the information that is presented but yet there can be more.

This is what makes the field of Emergency Management interesting and challenging. It also involves working with Law enforcement, Fire service, Military and other Governmental and non-governmental agencies.  

This revised site is here for you and yours. If you have suggestions for links in the various areas of emergency services, send us an email with that suggestion and we’ll get it added to the website.

Thank you,

Mike Honigsberg
580-249-5969
Mike@gcem.org