David Hartin, EMA director of Tuscaloosa, AL, discusses disaster preparation with a crowd of 50 safety professionals at the Cleveland/Bradley Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday.CLEVELAND, Tenn. — Preparation and adaptation were key elements of a disaster planning presentation given to a crowd of 50 safety professionals at the Cleveland/Bradley Safety Council this week.
In front of local industrial and emergency response officials at the Cleveland/Bradley Chamber of Commerce, David Hartin, director of the Emergency Management Agency for Tuscaloosa, Ala., shared experiences and lessons learned from the April 27, 2011, storms that battered his community.
Emergency management plans cannot have too many backups, Hartin said.
“Redundancy, redundancy, redundancy,” he said. “What you think you’ve got backed up, back up a second time, back up a third time.”
Communities need to be able to cope with critical damage to emergency-responder and short- and long-term relief systems during a disaster and its aftermath, Hartin said. The loss of cornerstone facilities, communications and vehicles can throw existing plans and logistics into disarray during a crisis, he said.