News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
Sparta is adopting a new emergency operations plan that lays out how the city responds to disasters.
City Administrator Brad Hennessee said before, the city lacked a plan of response. Hennessee said in the event something happens, city employees and officials will be given a task card on what to do.
“The beauty of the way that the plan is set up is you don’t have people memorizing tasks or trying to remember what their specific role is,” Hennessee said. “They don’t know what the role is going to be until the assessments are made.”
Hennessee said the plan was created to be adaptable with the ability to plug in a person to any role. When a disaster happens, Hennessee said an incident commander gets assigned based on the event. For example, the public works director would lead a tornado response.
“We wanted for everybody to remain as calm as possible throughout the community if something like that happens,” Hennessee said. “We want to present the image that we have a plan, and it should help coordinate a controlled response.”
Hennessee said the commander would assess the disaster, determine which task cards to use and then city employees would follow the check list provided. Hennessee said there are five sets in departments across the city.
“TEMA/FEMA the typical goal for them is to respond in 24 hours, so our role is to setup the response and get things going until they get here,” Hennessee said.
Hennessee said he created the framework. Then worked with department heads, White County 911 and EMA to finalize the response.
