What Happened?
The Henderson County Sheriff’s Department in North Carolina is creating a Citizens Preparedness Division to assist deputies during emergency situations. The volunteer-run group will have significantly more responsibility than simple paperwork.
Goal
The Henderson County Sheriff has gathered 15 volunteer citizens who have passed background checks to join the Citizens Preparedness Division. The group will undergo low-level preparedness training and work alongside deputies during emergencies. The goal of the project is to utilize volunteer manpower to effectively prepare for and respond to emergency situations.
The project is unique in that volunteers assisting sheriff’s departments in North Carolina are typically restricted to filling papers or directing traffic. In Henderson County, however, police departments and sheriff offices consider volunteers valuable resources for emergency support and stronger connections to the community, the Citizen Times reported.
The 15 current members of the group received more than eight months of training where they learned how to:
- Search a building for an intruder
- Ride along with a patrol officer
- Direct residents to safe locations during an emergency
- Disable guns they may find to create a safe space for law enforcement
The members of the Citizens Preparedness Division will not be permitted to carry guns when assisting the department. They will, however, know how to help local residents find safety when crisis strikes, Citizens Times reported.
National Framework
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) released the National Protection Framework over the summer outlining how communities must work together to prepare for emergencies. The framework covers five preparedness mission areas:
- Prevention: Capabilities necessary to avoid, prevent or stop a threatened or actual act of terrorism.
- Protection: Capabilities necessary to secure against acts of terrorism or disasters.
- Mitigation: Capabilities necessary to reduce the loss of life and property by lowering the impact of disasters.
- Response: Capabilities necessary to save lives, protect property and the environment, and meet basic human needs after an incident has occurred.
- Rescue: Capabilities necessary to assist communities affected by an incident to recover effectively.
Within the five preparedness mission areas, FEMA has identified 31 core capabilities needed to achieve each mission’s goal. Within the National Planning Frameworks FEMA has broken down strategies into key themes:
- Engaging partnership with the whole community
- Scalability, flexibility, and adaptability in implementation
- Integration among the frameworks: prevention, protection, mitigation, response, rescue
To help community leaders, first responders and individual citizens prepare for emergencies, FEMA offers emergency management training programs. FEMA also awards grants specifically for emergency preparedness and response:
- Preparedness (Non-Disaster) Grants: Provides state and local governments with preparedness program funding to enhance the abilities of emergency responders to prevent, respond to and recover from a destructive incident involving chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, explosive or cyber attacks.
- Assistance to Firefighters Grants: Provides assistance to firefighters and emergency responders to ensure they have access to the latest resources and training to provide superior services to the community in the event of an emergency.
- Hazard Mitigation Assistance: Provides assistance to communities and homeowners to protect life and property from future natural disasters.
For more information on grant opportunities browse the GrantFinder database.
Planning Ahead
Gov1 has kept a close eye on the resources available to improve emergency communications and responses, as well as grants to fund preparedness programs.