Brad Thomas is taking advantage of recent time spent in the classroom to improve Crawford County’s disaster readiness procedures.
Last year Thomas, the county’s Emergency Management director, and his peers from across the state were given the opportunity to complete five classes in one year, a process that would normally take five years. The classes offered ideas Thomas plans on implementing as a benefit to the county’s residents during an emergency.
The Emergency Management Basic Academy, held in Jacksonville, was sponsored by the Arkansas Department of Emergency Management (ADEM), Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and Emergency Management Institute (EMI).
“This would normally take me five years to get that training because I can only take one class at EMI a year,” said Thomas. “That’s what they pay for, one class a year through the state training officer and they approve you for one class a year. So, when we found out about this a few of us jumped all over it because we really wanted it. We’ve been asking for training – we want to get all the training we can – so the state brought FEMA to us.”
Organizers originally scheduled the classes to start in January of 2020 and finish in December, but after starting they were forced to postpone due to COVID-19. Once they regrouped, they were able to finish by the end of the year.
The first class, which lasted a week, was called Foundations of Emergency Management. Thomas said the class contained “just a ton of material,” including a plan for organizing a communications station setup, the likes of which he’s already started putting together.
“I’m getting a radio room here in our facility,” he said. “We decided to do that based on several recommendations from people in our Foundations of Emergency Management class, mostly FEMA representatives. They really had some good recommendations. So, we’ve already started on that project.”
The second class centered around the science of disasters, which Thomas said he found quite interesting.
“That class was right up my alley because I’m a weather geek,” he laughed.
The other classes focused on planning for disasters, developing a Homeland Security Exercise and Evaluation Program (HSEEP) and ways to deal with disseminating information to the public as well as improving warning systems.
“Every emergency manager in the state has to conduct an exercise each year in order to get emergency management grant funding, which is basically my salary,” Thomas said, “so we have to do that every year and the HSEEP class showed you exactly how to conduct your exercise: how to document it and how to make it where you pass all the qualifications you need to pass to secure the grant funding.”
Another idea Thomas gleaned from the HSEEP class and is already beginning to organize is a study that will help assess the county’s emergency readiness. Since Crawford County is in a unique situation from a potential disaster standpoint, Thomas believes the various agencies in the county can never have enough training. Therefore, he is developing a study that will help officials better understand the various training needs of the county.
“We have Interstate 40, we have Union Pacific, we have I-49, we have the river … we have hazardous materials coming through here all of the time,” Thomas said. “Sometimes we don’t know what we have, so one of the things I took out of this class was the idea of conducting a hazmat study using the guidelines provided by one of these instructors. He developed a plan for a study like this and has great information on how to implement it. So that’s another big takeaway I got from this class.”
Thomas, who has been in his current position since September of 2016, graduated from Arkansas Tech in 2012 with an emergency management degree.
“That (degree) was optional,” he said. “You don’t have to do it, but I wanted to do it.”
Once he started as director, he said he quickly realized that receiving extra education like he did last year can provide valuable experience in helping him be successful in his job.
“The bigger thing is that I’m able to implement some of the things I learned. That’s a big deal,” he said.
Another useful aspect is being able to network with his peers from across the state.
“One of the guys who took these classes with me was Anthony Coy, who is the Craighead County emergency management director, and he just went through a
tornado and a pandemic, kind of like the same stuff I went through in 2018 (tornado) and 2019 (Arkansas River flooding) and the pandemic last year,” Thomas said. “Just being able to communicate with each other all the way across the state, and get ideas from each other, is wonderful. I reach out to him all the time and he reaches out to me.”
Thomas added, “When I first started doing this, I realized you need to make yourself known and have a presence at some of these things. Now I understand how really important it is to do that and to communicate with others across the state and get some really good ideas from them.”
Another project Thomas hopes to take on in the future is an upgrade of the department’s conference room equipment.
“I want better technology in my conference room because there may be a time when we have to have the county judge, the JPs or whoever up here for meetings or emergency situations,” he said, “and I want to make sure we have the technology we need to get things done in those situations.
“We can do that right now; buy I’d like to have the state-of-the-art equipment to help us be as successful as possible.”
Thomas said while it’s nice that it doesn’t “cost the county a penny” for him to take these classes and to implement some of these improvements.”
“It is a bonus to have the unwavering support from County Judge Dennis Gilstrap. He’s incredibly supportive. He absolutely is,” said Thomas. “I’m very fortunate to have him as our county judge because he encourages us to get all the training we can get.”
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