By Adam Swift
Fire Chief Scott Wiley presented the most recent update to the town’s emergency management plan at the most recent town council meeting earlier this month.
“The town of Winthrop is part of the Mystic Regional Emergency Planning Commission,” said Wiley. “We are one of 27 communities in the Regional Emergency Planning Commission, and we meet monthly and train quarterly.”
One of the ways the emergency management plan gets put together, the fire chief said, is through tier 2 reporting through the statewide emergency response commission. That reporting mandates that anyone who stores hazardous materials on their property has to report it to the state, and that reporting gets put into state software.
“There are 3,000 individual sites in the 27 communities, and each one is extremely detailed,” said Wiley, adding that the information is not for public dissemination because it includes detailed information on the amount, properties, and storage locations of the materials.
The town’s emergency management plan takes into account how the town and the region would deal with any issues involving those hazardous materials.
In addition, the document touches on other emergency management issues, from providing information on the town’s website to information on how the town and region would deal with flooding and other natural disasters.
“The primary goal of government is to provide for the safety and welfare of its citizens, and they are never more threatened than during a time of disaster and other emergencies,” said Wiley. “The goal of emergency management is to ensure that effective, multi-discipline, multi-jurisdictional mitigation responses and recovery plans exist and that the public welfare and safety is preserved. This is an 88-page document the town manager and I sign off on.”
Wiley said the plan has specifics about the operation of the emergency operations center and provides information on threat hazards, incident coordination, assistance with special needs populations, and the roles and responsibilities of each department head in the town.
When it comes to responding to hazardous materials incidents, Wiley noted that all police officers in town have hazardous material awareness training, and that all firefighters have, at a minimum, hazardous materials operational training.
“One of the issues that people concern themselves with, rightfully so, are hazardous materials incidents,” said Wiley. “While this is very specific in how we respond to something like that, it doesn’t go into operations responses with a one-size-fits-all response.”
When it comes to hazardous materials, Wiley said the response can be dependent on the location, the materials, the weather, and other factors.