Genoa Twp. Emergency Preparedness Committee forming

By LENNY C. LEPOLA

News Assis­tant Man­ag­ing Editor

Mem­bers of the Genoa Town­ship Board of Trustees announced that a recent meet­ing between the Regional Red Cross and Genoa Town­ship offi­cials would lead to an expan­sion of vol­un­teer recruit­ment and emer­gency plan­ning com­mu­ni­ca­tions with residents.

Genoa Town­ship Trustee Karl Geb­hardt called a meet­ing of the township’s fire, police, town­ship admin­is­tra­tor and Stu­art Gray, Regional Emer­gency Ser­vices Field Spe­cial­ist for the area Red Cross, to review the township’s cur­rent state of preparedness.

Gray indi­cated that there are facil­i­ties iden­ti­fied as emer­gency shel­ters through­out Delaware County, includ­ing in Genoa Town­ship, in the event of weather related or other emergencies.

“But we need to iden­tify more vol­un­teers to assist and develop a process for get­ting them engaged,” Gray said, adding that the biggest threat comes dur­ing the win­ter fol­lowed by tor­na­does or severe storms.

Gray also noted that man-made emer­gen­cies such as haz­ardous chem­i­cal spills could also require imple­men­ta­tion of an emer­gency action plan.

“With nearly 24,000 res­i­dents in our town­ship the trustees and safety ser­vice offi­cials won’t wait for an emer­gency to arise before mak­ing sure we have a plan, and more impor­tantly that our res­i­dents know how to respond to the plan.”

Geb­hardt said the trustees would be orga­niz­ing a cit­i­zens com­mit­tee to work with the Red Cross in recruit­ing vol­un­teers and estab­lish­ing a com­mu­ni­ca­tions strategy.

“We will be eval­u­at­ing the best options for com­mu­ni­cat­ing with our res­i­dents in the event of an emer­gency, and ensur­ing local churches and schools des­ig­nated as shel­ters by the Red Cross are pre­pared,” Geb­hardt said. “I am pleased with the cur­rent state of pre­pared­ness of the Red Cross and our township’s Police and Fire depart­ments, but we need to make sure our res­i­dents are pre­pared and under­stand what to do in an emer­gency situation.”

Geb­hardt said that any­one inter­ested in serv­ing as a Red Cross vol­un­teer or serv­ing on the town­ship citizen’s com­mit­tee should con­tact the Genoa Town­ship Admin­is­tra­tion Office at 614–895-1126.

The next reg­u­larly sched­uled meet­ing of the Genoa Town­ship Board of Trustees is 7 p.m. today (Thurs­day, Jan­u­ary 3) at the Genoa Town­ship Hall, 5111 South Old 3C High­way, Westerville.

An updated list of Genoa Town­ship meet­ings is avail­able on the town­ship web­site at < genoatwp.com >.

The Genoa Town­ship Admin­is­tra­tive Offices are located at the Genoa Town­ship Hall, 5111 South Old 3C High­way, West­er­ville. They are reg­u­larly open to the pub­lic Mon­day through Fri­day from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

Posted by Gary Henery on Jan 2 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.