The City of Dickson is considering creating an Office of Emergency Management to coordinate responses to natural and other disasters in the city.
Mayor Don L. Weiss Jr. presented a resolution to create an Office of Emergency Management to the Dickson City Council’s Finance and Management Committee for discussion at its meeting Monday Dec. 19, 2022. Weiss said the resolution will be on the council’s January agenda for consideration.
“We’ve been discussing this among staff members now since just a little before COVID started,” Weiss said.
City Administrator Rydell Wesson and Police Chief Jeff Lewis said creating the office will give the city direct access to information, funding and planning to formulate and facilitate the city’s response to all kinds of emergencies, from tornadoes, flooding, storms and other weather events to fires, hazardous materials incidents and even terrorism attacks.
“The current Emergency Management Agency, the EMA, is a county organization. That EMA, through the state and federal agencies, holds most of the HAZMAT equipment and stuff that we actually have the manpower and the people that utilize that,” Wesson said. “There’s funding out there that we can look into.”
Wesson said the new office also would be able to research and plan for early warning systems such as tornado sirens within the city.
Chief Lewis said creating the city’s own Office of Emergency Management would allow the city to receive information on events and disasters directly from the Federal and Tennessee emergency management agencies. Currently the city is included in the Dickson County Emergency Management Agency’s response plan and receives information and instructions through that agency.
“What we’d love to do is clean up the process where we’re getting the same information at the same time as everybody else is,” Lewis said. “We feel it’s pertinent not only to our citizens of the city, but the employees as well.”
Lewis said a city emergency management office will coordinate the city’s resources and personnel in the response to any emergency. The city is considering creating an enclosed classroom at its training facility in J. Dan Buckner Park and proposes to equip it to serve as an Emergency Operations Center (EOC) from which disaster responses will be coordinated.
A designated Emergency Management director would oversee the creation of the city’s Basic Emergency Operations Plan (BEOP) and oversee an Emergency Services Coordinator (ESC) Group consisting of city officials and department heads that would respond to the EOC to coordinate the response.
“When you start talking about the Office of Emergency Management, we’re going to be utilizing police department employees, public works employees, we’re going to be utilizing folks from the fire department and also communications to help do this,” Lewis said.
As an example, Lewis said when tornados struck in the Burns and Dickson area, causing extensive damage along Murrell Road last December, the police department had seven officers on the road who had no information about what was going on, placing them at risk.
“This allows us to receive the same information at the same time as everyone else,” Lewis said. “The Office of Emergency Management director at that point will start notifying the department heads where we need to go and what resources we’re going to have to have.”
Lewis said city officials have met with Dickson County Emergency Management Agency Director Rob Fisher and he agrees it is time that the City of Dickson formulate its own response protocols and resources.
“He says it’s time that the city does this, that we’re big enough,” Lewis said. “A lot of cities our size have an Office of Emergency Management.”
Lewis said most of the information for the city’s BEOP already exists within the county’s response plan and the city “will not have to re-invent the wheel.”
“From a financial standpoint, too, it gives us resources from the state and federal agencies that we’re right now not utilizing,” Wesson said.
“This opens the door for us to be able to file for federal grants and also state grants to help us,” Lewis said. “I think it’s a really good move.”
Under mutual aid agreements with Dickson County and other municipalities, Lewis said the proposed Office of Emergency Management still would assist with emergency situations outside the city.
“We’ll still work with the county. We’re not excluding the county on anything,” Lewis said. “We’ll still work with them. If it’s out in the county and they need help, we’re going to go help.”
The resolution creating the Office of Emergency Management and establishing the responsibilities and duties of its director will be presented at the January council meeting, which has been rescheduled to 7:00 pm Monday, Jan. 9, due to the New Year’s holiday closing city offices on Jan. 2.
