The money will be used to develop a training program on supply lines.
Frederick, Md (KM) A $1-million grant has been awarded to the Mid-Atlantic Center for Emergency Management and Public Safety located at Frederick Community College. The funds come from the Federal Emergency Management Agency
Kathy Francis, the Executive Director of the Center, says the funds will be used to develop a three-year training program in developing and managing supply lines during disasters so that food, water, shelter, medicines and other necessities reach the victims of disasters. . She says there are often challenges when it comes to developing these life lines.. “We’ve also looked after-action reports and lessons learned from those disasters, and found our supply chain have weaknesses and sometimes even failed in our abilities to move commodities related to food, water, medical supplies and shelter supplies during critical times,” she says. “So this course will address that gap.”
Francis says this was evident during some recent disasters. “You see examples of that in anything from Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico and the difficulty in getting food, water and medical supplies in to the wildfires in California to that intense drought that we saw in the Rio Grande and then the subsequent flooding all through Deep South Texas,” she says.
Helping to provide victims of disasters with the necessities was not easy for first responders and their supervisors. “All of those disasters posed a challenge to really rapidly resources those first responders and senior leaders,:” says Francis.
FCC says this is the third FEMA grant awarded to the Center. That previous money went to developing training for dealing with complex terrorist attacks and developing public-private partnerships supporting community resilience. “That documents that we’ve had expert performance on our past two grants that began in 2012 and 2015, and we’ll continue to produce excellent, cutting edge training nationwide,” she says.
The Mid-Atlantic Center for Emergency Management and Public Safety focuses on developing planning and operational knowledge and skills supporting all members of a community affected by a disasters, from first responders on the ground to their supervisors. That ensures that both government and private industry plan and implement programs to provide a sufficient supply chain to deliver food, water and other necessities to all disasters victims, according to information from FCC> . The Center offers academic programs in criminal justice, emergency management, fire service administration, geographic information systems and police science.
By Kevin McManus