Gibson County duo will help hurricane relief effort | News

Stephanie McKinney, EMA Administrative Assistant in Gibson County and Kent Winkler, Assistant Fire Chief in Princeton Fire Territory, will join five other trained professionals from southwest Indiana who are deploying to New York for a two-week mission to help with the relief efforts following Hurricane Sandy.

They'll be joined by other local EMA officials who will work in and around Long Island.

NIMS (National Incident Command Systems) is a FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) certified emergency management system used across the U.S. to coordinate preparedness, incident management, and response among public and private sectors. By using this system trained people can plan, prepare, prevent, mitigate, respond and recover from incidents of any size, cause, location, or complexity, to reduce loss of life and property and harm to our environment.

NIMS enables trained government, not–for–profit, and private sector responders from across the country to work side by side during any incident in a predictable and coordinated manner, because the terminology, structure, process and procedure is standardized.

Hurricane Sandy made landfall October 29.  Government, not for profit, and private sector employees and volunteers in the impacted communities made sure their families were safe and immediately opened Incident Command Centers. It was clear this incident was too massive to be handled locally and responders and outside resources were needed.  Persons from nearby areas not impacted by the storm were mobilized.

Now, resources from further west are deploying to aid in response and recovery. Like any workplace, staff changes are necessary at the end of operational periods. To preserve staff health and well-being, breaks, sleep, food, and time away are vital.  The seven people from southwestern Indiana will join people from other Districts across the country to provide the needed trained backup.