Emergency preparedness discussed at The Hub
Logan City and Utah State University presented a collaborated emergency preparedness plan to USU students in a forum sponsored by the Associated Students of Utah State University Public Affairs Board on Tuesday.
Scott Douglas, safety director for Logan, said the Emergency Planning Neighborhood Council has been established to design a way “for every person in Logan to have access to city services in the case of an emergency or disaster.”
Douglas said the goal of the council is to “take the different emergency preparedness plans of USU and Logan and tie them together.”
He said citizens and students need a way to get help when normal communications are down.
Just as Logan is divided into neighborhoods, USU is its own neighborhood divided into buildings, Douglas said.
Jeff Peterson, fire chief for Logan, said by dividing into neighborhood councils “we end up setting up area commands.”
In Logan, these area commands are the elementary schools where citizens have access to trained officials for emergencies placed there by the city.
“This is when 911 doesn’t work,” Peterson said.
“With 100,000 people across the Cache Valley calling 911 in a disaster, it would be absolutely impossible to prioritize those calls,” he said.
The new emergency preparedness plan now allows the police, fire station and other services to be contacted immediately, Peterson said.
Laurie Tanner, director of Administrative Services for Logan, said even without the Sept. 11 terrorist attack, the new plan would have gone into effect. The city has been working on it for the last three years.
Tanner said the reason the Emergency Planning Neighborhood Council is presenting the plan to students right now is because “we need students to know what they need to do in case of an emergency.”
Lynn Wright, who works with USU police in emergency management, said, “We are a city within a city and we are a neighborhood council, but we also rely on Logan for systems we don’t have such as fire protection and police backup.”
Each building on campus has an emergency building coordinator assigned to it. The coordinator makes sure the building is evacuated and addresses the needs of the building such as securing valuable research material, Wright said.
he said, “We try to cover all areas in the plan so [students] can continue [their] education and feel comfortable.”
Mayor Doug Thompson said, “We encourage people to have a 72-hour kit.
“I really believe it’s incumbent upon the individual to take care of food,” he said.
Thompson also addressed unemployment during the forum. He said the question he is constantly asked by students is about jobs.
Thompson said unemployment has gone up in Logan by 3 percent.
“People are being laid off right now,” he said.
“Yet, at the same time we’ve been attracting new businesses and we are hopeful that when [students] graduate [they’ll] have a job here in Logan – that is one of our goals,” Thompson said.