Shelia Maxwell of Greenbrier
Emergency-management director finds job gratifying
Shelia Maxwell was sitting at the front desk at a county building in Conway, and she slid back the glass window to see what a visitor needed. One might assume that she’s a receptionist.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but she’s the boss. Maxwell, 37, who lives in Greenbrier, is one of the more important women in Faulkner County — probably the most important woman when disaster strikes.
As director of the Office of Emergency Management/911, she is the woman with local and state connections.
Need a helicopter to look for a missing person? Call Maxwell. Need the Army National Guard? Call Maxwell.
Seventeen years ago, people just called her when they needed a refill of tea.
Maxwell, who grew up in Guy, was
I knew when I was looking at it, it was something a man would do, and I knew that would be a challenge.”
the daughter of a stay-at-home mom and a carpenter who had five children between them.
“We grew up really poor. We ate what my dad caught or killed, or grew in the garden,” she said.
After she graduated from Guy-perkins High School, Maxwell worked as a truck-stop waitress in Springhill.
“That’s where I met John Wayne Carter,” she said. Carter was Faulkner County judge at the time, and he mentioned he had an opening for an administrative assistant.
She was attracted to the benefits and retirement plan, not the salary.
“When I started with the county in ’96, I probably wasn’t making half of what I was making waitressing,” she said.
SHELIA MAXWELL Director of the Faulkner County Office of Emergency
Management/911 on applying for that position
“I loved it; I loved it. The biggest thing, I guess, was the people.”
Maxwell’s desk was at the front of the office, and she talked with everyone who came in to see the county judge.
She said Carter was her mentor, and he taught her about government, politics, life and about herself.
“I went to work for him when I was 19,” she said.
Carter said Maxwell was an excellent employee.
“She’s a hard worker. The more you pile on her, the harder she’ll get on it. That’s another thing; when she gets on something, she’ll stay on it till she gets it done,” he said.
He said Maxwell always had “a thirst for knowledge.”
After 13 years in the judge’s office, she still enjoyed it.
“But I got to where I could do it in my sleep,” she said.
Maxwell applied for the position of director of emergency management.
“I knew when I was looking at it, it was something a man would do, and I knew that would be a challenge,” she said.
She said she’s always been comfortable in a man’s world.
“I was a tomboy. I didn’t play with Barbies; I played with tractors,” she said.
To this day, she’d rather be fishing than shopping.
Maxwell took over the job in February 2008, and her experience in the county judge’s office turned out to be invaluable.
“In this position, there’s a lot of paperwork involved — a lot of office-type stuff more than boots-on-theground work,” she said.
“A lot of the administrative work in this job is knowing how the county runs, how it works. There’s a procedure in getting a check, getting a purchase order. … Knowing how county government works is a big part of the job.”
She has a list of county and state resources, and a long list of contact numbers in her cellphone.
“Anytime the judge says, ‘Hey, we need this,’ I go find it — if we need dozers or chain saws, or whatever, to open a road,” she said.
The tornado that tore through Vilonia on April 25, 2011, “was actually my first large disaster,” she said. “We have flooding disasters every year.”
Maxwell is also a certified flood plain manager.
She is responsible for activating Weathernet, where all the county volunteer fire departments, law enforcement, etc., monitor the weather on the same radio channel.
“What was weird about that night, I had gone to the (Conway) Emergency Operations Center to conduct Weathernet,” she said. “We had storm spotters watching the cloud as it came across [Arkansas] 89, all of a sudden it got really quiet (on the radio), and 911 calls started coming in, and we knew we’d been hit.
“I was the only one there for quite some time. It was, ‘What do I do?’ I hear all this traffic coming from the dispatcher; I hear all this traffic coming on the radio.’”
First, “we had to start the ball rolling with getting a verbal declaration to the state (that it was a disaster),” she said.
Faulkner County Judge Preston Scroggin declared the county a disaster area, and after the initial search and rescue, a command post was set up.
“You keep up with invoices, generators, where they go, how many we feed. We opened a volunteer center. I did this in coordination with other agencies. I contacted ADEM (Arkansas Department of Emergency Management) and said, ‘This is what we need.’”
Maxwell said all the OEM employees’ time “is spent planning, preparing and training for these types of events.”
She wrote the initial grant to get the Community Emergency Response Team program, which is conducted through the department.
“We try to target the community and teach them to be self-sustaining in a disaster. We teach fire support, basic medical treatment and triage,” she said.
Her biggest surprise after getting into the job was how many hats she has to wear.
“I said, ‘Man, I need more people,’” she said, laughing.
“I couldn’t ask for a better staff,” she said more than once during the interview.
Maxwell has voluntarily added more hats, too.
In the past four years, she has become a hazmat technician, which took 80 hours of training and is not required in her position.
OEM goes to the scene of hazardous-materials spills and can offer guidance to f ire departments dur ing cleanup.
“I can get in a level A encapsulated suit and work,” she said.
Many firefighters are at the lower, hazmat-awareness level, and she can offer guidance to help protect them.
“I have two young kids, and I want to go home to them every night,” she said.
She got home at 4:30 a.m. Wednesday after working a fatality accident in Greenbrier in which a truck was leaking diesel fuel.
Maxwell definitely goes the extra mile.
Another title she has is fire-service coordinator, and OEM assists volunteer fire departments with grants for equipment purchases.
To better understand the firefighters she helps, she became one.
Maxwell joined the Greenbrier Volunteer Fire Department a year ago in March.
“I’m actually a volunteer fireman, fire girl, whatever,” she said, laughing.
“I absolutely love it. My biggest challenge is learning to drive the big trucks — they’re kind of scary.”
Sometimes, she has to switch gears on a fire run.
On a grass fire not long ago, a lot of tires were burning, which is hazardous.
“My chief relieves me of my duty with the fire department, and I become OEM.”
She contacted the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality and filled out a report.
“We’ve got some of the best volunteer fire departments,” Maxwell said. “One thing I can say about Faulkner County — we work really well together, and that makes my job easier.”
One piece of advice she said Carter gave her was, “Surround yourself with good people.”
She said she found it hard to delegate when she first became the OEM director, but she learned.
“I have a great staff — I can’t brag on them enough,” she said.
Dirk Sutterfield is the OEM deputy coordinator; Larry Brewer is the 911 deputy coordinator; Julie Harlan is the administrative assistant; and Mary Johnson is secretary.
“It’s the most gratifying job I think I could ask for, being able to help people and, again, all the wonderful people I’m surrounded by,” she said.