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NHS
Homecoming 2005
Gilmore meted 11 more years in prison
Court of Appeals dismisses 2002 case of
man convicted in abuse of Newberg girl
Trio will split $74K in bingo winnings
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Is Newberg prepared for disaster? |
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Recent disasters in the South prompt Fire Chief
Michael Sherman to talk about the city's voluminous emergency
operation plan |
By Gunnar
Olson, Newberg
Graphic reporter
E-mail Gunnar at
golson@eaglenewspapers.com
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In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, local
and state governments have been asking: Would we be ready for such a
disaster?
Not a Katrina, but just about anything of a lesser scale, is the
answer in Newberg.
Fire Chief Michael Sherman said Newberg is prepared to handle 99
percent of disasters, natural or manmade. He said the other 1
percent — disasters on the scale of Katrina, which decimated New
Orleans on the Gulf Coast — would overwhelm Newberg’s resources.
How the city responds to disasters is spelled out in its emergency
operation plan. Far from a forgotten document in a dusty corner of
city hall, a copy of the plan is near at hand for all of the
department heads, the city manager, city attorney and others — there
are 20 copies in all.
Ostensibly the plan has the answer to any question a public
official might have about how he or she needs to respond in a major
emergency. Police Chief Bob Tardiff, for instance, could consult the
plan to find out that his is the lead agency when responding to a
bomb threat.
But, as Sherman points out, “The best laid plans of mice and men
aren’t any good until they’re battle tested.”
The plan lays out steps to take in the event of a major fire,
flood, wind storm, winter storm or aircraft disaster, to name a
handful of potential calamities.
While counties are required by the federal government to have
emergency operation plans, cities aren’t, Sherman said. But he said
most cities with a population of 10,000 or more people develop such
plans regardless.
Sherman said Newberg had a plan for emergency operations when he
joined the department in 1992. But apparently it wasn’t much of one:
The department didn’t use it during the Spring Break ‘Quake of March
1993. Sherman said he fell back on his experience in emergency
responses to improvise his way through the response to the
5.0-magnitude that rattled Newberg.
“Other than we had the book in the room, I don’t think we used it,”
Sherman said.
He said the city had been rewriting the plan, a process that was
finished in 1994. The plan was reworked again in 1999, and was
updated most recently in 2003. The city used a grant from the
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to include plans for a
bio-terrorism attack.
Each plan takes up a four-inch binder, complete with a front-page
index and quick-reference tabs to the different sections. Each is
stored in shoulder bag with bright lettering on the front — “City of
Newberg Emergency Operations Plan” — that can be picked up and
carried about at moment’s notice.
In each bag is a copy of the plan for activating multi-agency
response. Each bag comes with a resource guide, which gives
emergency responders lists of all the resources available from the
major institutions in town, among them Ushio, George Fox University
and Providence Newberg Hospital. Each bag also comes with a map of
Newberg, as well as of Yamhill County. |
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From
Oct. 1,
2005, Newberg Graphic
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