9/8/17

It appears this will be a weekend of weekends for weather here in the United States. As the recovery effort and ongoing flooding in southeast Texas from Hurricane Harvey continues, the southeastern part of the US is gearing up for Hurricane Irma. What about Hurricane Jose? We’ll have to wait and see since Irma has churned up a lot of that energy. Then add on top of all of this, an 8.1 earthquake in Southern Mexico and then here in our area southeast of Pond Creek, a 3.9 earthquake along with a 2.4 north of Lahoma. Add on top of all of this, the fires out west and northwest causing the haze from the smoke over our area. It does give us some colorful sunrises and sunsets though. Good thing we are under high pressure so we’ll be mostly clear and warm for the next week or so. Other than these events, not much else happening on the larger scale.

Having disasters occur is a very rough issue. It does bring to light how either prepared or unprepared we are here in our region. In my position, it’s my responsibility to make sure our jurisdictions are as ready as possible in the event something major occurs here. We are not as ready as we need to be and over the next several months I will conduct several meetings concerning infrastructure issues along with where we are in all of our search and rescue capabilities, hospital care and backup resources, public utilities both city and rural along with electrical and gas companies. The list is longer but a date will be set and the initial meeting will be posted at a later time. Don’t get upset if an organization or provider isn’t listed above. The list is long and everyone involved at that level will hopefully be willing to share strengths and weaknesses so we can build ourselves into a DISASTER READY COUNTY. Believe me, this won’t happen overnight. I just don’t want to wait until something happens and people die to start figuring out what we can do better than what we already do right now. It will be a good start to better our systems.

Finally, we’re ok. I just want everyone to re-evaluate your personal efforts to be ready for anything that could possibly happen here and have that plan ready to enact if needed. What will you do? Where will you go? Who is your contact person out of this area? Do your family members know this plan? Do you have your emergency kits ready to go. These are just a few things you need to know and have. YOU should be ready to take care of your family. We in emergency services will continue to train and prepare to help you all through this process and to assist you in your time of need.

Weather-wise, we’re good. Get out and enjoy, just be careful.

HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND!!

MIKE

Mike Honigsberg, Certified Director

Enid/Garfield County Emergency Management

E.O.C. 580-249-5969

CELL-580-541-1263

https://gcem.org

Twitter-@garfieldem

Facebook- www.facebook.com/@EGCEM

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