EMS In Good Hands With Gregg Sweeten
The McDonald County Emergency Management Agency is formed under Missouri Statute 44.080, which states that each political subdivision of this state shall establish a local organization for disaster planning in accordance with the state emergency operations plan and program.
The current Emergency Management Director for McDonald County is Gregg Sweeten, who was appointed in December 1995. Sweeten has extensive training and experience dealing with emergency situations. He started in “Civil Defense” in Oklahoma in 1981 and has continued being involved in all aspects of emergency services since that time.
Sweeten took emergency medical technician training at the age of 16 and has 31 years of law enforcement experience and 21 years in fire service that adds to the Management Office.
The Emergency Management Agency has changed drastically since it went from “Civil Defense” to Emergency Management in the 1990s.
The agency has top-notch statewide radio communications and internet services that connect the agency to all other emergency management agencies in Missouri. We network with our partners in the four states also through the 4-Corners Emergency Management Association.
Disasters don’t stop at state lines and we can’t either. Our agency does mutual aid anywhere we are needed. Region D, which is the 18 counties in Southwest Missouri, train and exercise together all through the year. This makes us better prepared to serve our citizens and the citizens of the state of Missouri.
Probably the biggest and most frequent disasters we deal with here in McDonald County involves flooding. We have two flood claims pending now with FEMA for several hundred thousand dollars each from flooding in the spring of 2015 and December 2015.
The amount of paperwork that is included in a FEMA flood reimbursement is constantly growing. A devastating flood on our roads and bridges can take a toll on our county budget. If we reach a certain threshold in McDonald County, we can declare a disaster, but Missouri has to reach a statewide threshold total before a federal declaration can be reached. Then if our residents suffer damage to their homes, we have another program we have to go through to help them get funding.
During the year, we provided storm spotter training to responders as well as local citizens and taught Community Emergency Response Team training. We monitor the weather and send out alerts and warnings as we get them from the National Weather Service. We take care of any hazardous-materials situations in McDonald County as well as exercise and plan for events that may come our way.
Emergency Management is a constant and evolving program, and we want to stay ahead of what may come our way with training and preparedness goals. Our countywide hazardous mitigation plan is in the process of being updated now and we look back over the last 5 years and see what has been accomplished.
There have been numerous low-water bridges raised and changed to box culvert bridges which make it safer for folks to travel our county roads during floods.