Midland County Emergency Event Management Plans Ahead

ODESSA, Texas (KOSA) – With several major events scheduled for the summer, behind-the-scenes planning begins months in advance.

Midland County Emergency Management is preparing ahead of time to keep the community safe.

During a special event, such as a fair, a 4th of July celebration or a community barbecue, there is always the possibility of an emergency.

In this case, an incident action plan is created, should something happen.

Not all special events go as planned.

And when things take a turn for the worst, Midland County Emergency Management has already developed an Incident Action Plan to respond.

Rusty Winn, Midland County Emergency Management, provided details on how they develop these plans.

“We’ll spend 95% of the time planning everything in the worst case scenario,” Winn said. “And just like that on most all events and maybe only 5% of those events will you actually use one of the incident action plans.”

The County Incident Action Plan uses many of the same key elements as FEMA, which is made up of law enforcement agencies and first responders, including event personnel.

Emergency management indicates that no course of action is designed the same but uses special equipment to ensure safety.

“Last year we were kind enough to go to the Zumbro inflatable tent which will connect to each other if we need to, we can turn them into medical tents,” Winn said. “We have Polaris Rangers which are small ATV type vehicles so take care and sit in the back with them and that way we can get them out of a crowd which is a lot easier .”

Evacuation routes for medical services and law enforcement are also incorporated into the plan. Emergency management says it takes a lot of training to prepare.

“We’re going to the Texas Division of Emergency Management Conference,” Winn said. “And that way we can take more courses on different emergency management type sections so that we can come back better and improve everything we do here for the county:

The Texas Division of Emergency Management conference will be held later this month.

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