By Judith Meyer,Staff Writer
Counties have been ordered to update emergency evacuation plans.

The devastation and suffering caused by hurricanes Rita and Katrina in the Gulf Coast have spurred Maine to order each county to revise and update emergency management plans, including evacuation plans in case of floods, hurricanes or other disasters, natural or otherwise.

The plans, part of the federal National Incident Management System, are designed to help the state manage disasters, according to federal regulations.

Maine has until the end of the year to certify to the federal government that the work has been done, or risk losing federal emergency preparedness funds.

Accountability

Katrina taught emergency management directors that early coordination among relief organizations and government is essential for saving lives and property, so each county will identify resources and areas of need, said Androscoggin County EMA Director Joanne Potvin.

The counties will contact hospitals, schools, nursing homes and other large institutions to work on updating plans and confirming emergency phone numbers.

Last month, all 16 county EMA directors attended a required two-day meeting called by the State Emergency Management Agency to get instructions on why and how these plans were to be drawn. According to Franklin County EMA Director Tim Hardy, part of that instruction includes drawing firm lines of accountability from individuals up through local, county, state and federal governments.

The Katrina experience has heavily influenced new guidelines for Maine, Potvin said, “to make more specific evacuation routes. We’ll also be given tools to work with, like signs, for instance, saying Evacuation Route’ with arrows pointing in the direction people should be traveling.”

Pet plans

Also based on the Katrina experience, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, has required county EMA directors to address what evacuees are supposed to do with their pets.

“We’ve been told by FEMA that if our plans don’t incorporate handling of pets or animals for emergencies, that could be a cause for cutting off some of our funding,” Potvin said, including establishing pet-friendly shelters.

In Franklin County, the pet-friendly shelter would be Mt. Blue High School, and the Foster Regional Applied Technology Center could be opened to accommodate more animals, Hardy said.

His agency has submitted an application to get Homeland Security funds to buy a generator for those buildings in anticipation of housing pets there. And emergency management agencies will try to form citizen animal rescue teams, he said.

Agencies must also address “shelter in place” plans, in case of a hazardous materials spill where it might be safer to stay in the core of a building than to evacuate, Potvin said.

Ice and fire

One of the federal requirements for all counties is to establish communication processes to ensure uninterrupted communication among emergency responders, 911 centers and multi-agency coordination systems, such as emergency operations centers.

In Franklin County, Hardy’s office is working on a plan to use Homeland Security grants “to improve gaps in communication in dead zones.” He said his office considers amateur ham radio operators such valuable resources that they are included in the plan.

In Oxford County, in addition to adopting what he calls all-hazard plans in case of any and all disasters, EMA Director Scott Parker said the county also requires weapons of mass destruction training. Several teams have already completed the training, in cooperation with other organizations, Parker said, since 9/11.

“If we did have a problem, we have resources,” he said.

Maine is no stranger to disaster. Much of the Franklin County plan was tested during the Ice Storm of 1998, Hardy said. And Potvin’s office was called during a fire at Allied Container in Auburn several years ago.

“We needed to find foam to extinguish the fire,” she said, so she pulled out a resource listing “and went down the list of all the fire departments that had that kind of foam.”

Potvin, who has worked for the Androscoggin agency for 32 years, said the requirement to update emergency plans will be work, but not overwhelming work because the agency is constantly revising its plan.

“Every time an event happens,” she said, “we go back and we look at the plan.”

Staff writers Scott Taylor, Donna Perry and Rebecca Goldfine contributed to this report.

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