Ready for Anything

It might have been easy to miss, what with all the local controversies and national upheaval, but Howard County has completed a new Emergency Preparedness plan. From the Office of Emergency Management:

The Howard County Office of Emergency Management is proud to present the Howard County Comprehensive Emergency Response and Recovery Plan (CERRP), which was promulgated by Howard County Executive Calvin Ball yesterday, September 26th, 2019. The CERRP updates and replaces the 2015 Emergency Operations Plan (EOP) and incorporates lessons learned from the 2016 and 2018 Ellicott City floods.

The CERRP encompasses emergency preparedness, response, and recovery tasks, and guides a more seamless transition from response to recovery. The development of the CERRP included all County Departments and various external partners who have a role in emergency response and recovery and reflects a very lengthy process to improve the emergency response capabilities within Howard County.

The CERRP Base Plan can be viewed on our website here: http://ow.ly/EzoW50wtqD2

Emergency preparedness is not always at the forefront of my mind but I imagine that, for those in Old Ellicott City, it’s never far from their thoughts. Seeing this announcement was a reminder to me that the work of county government is going on all the time in so many different areas. Preparing for something that may or may not happen - - in fact you really hope it won’t happen - - takes a special kind of skill.

Of course, you can’t please everyone, and one reader responded with the following:

....but does it include a Zombie Apocalypse response?

While I haven’t contacted the Office of Emergency Management to get their official response, I did do a bit of preliminary research. If the OEM should decide to add Zombie Apocalypse Preparedness to their comprehensive plan, they need look no further than the CDC, which has published their own guidelines.

Still, some folks may not find this approach comprehensive, but it works for me.

Comments

Teacher Gifts

Today is the last day of school before the Winter Break. It’s a good time to remember the far-reaching nature of our public school system. You may not have children. You may have sent your children to independent schools. It matters not. You will be impacted one way or another. Yesterday I read a long thread on Facebook about several waves of illness in the schools right now. There’s influenza A and norovirus, I believe. And of course there’s COVID. Apparently in some individual schools the rate of illness is high enough for school admin to notify parents. When I was little the acceptable holiday gift for a teacher was one of those lovely floral handkerchief squares. (I don’t know what it was for male teachers. They were rare in my elementary years.) These days the range of teacher gifts is wider and I have fond memories of Target gift cards which I have written about before. I think it’s safe to say that giving one’s teacher Influenza, norovirus, or COVID is not the ideal holiday...

They Can Wait

This is not a typical Saturday post. That’s because, in my community, it’s not a typical Saturday. Oakland Mills High School, after years of deferred repair, needs massive renovation. It’s pretty simple: when you don’t fix a problem it gets bigger. The school system itself said the the OMHS school building was "no longer conducive to learning" back in 2018. 2018 . But Thursday the Boad of Education voted to push it out of the lineup of important projects which will be given the go-ahead to proceed soonest. In my opinion it’s a terrible decision and sets a dangerous precedent. To explain, here’s the advocacy letter I sent in support of Oakland Mills High School. I was rather proud of it. I am writing to ask you to proceed with needed renovation at Oakland Mills High School in the most timely and comprehensive manner humanly possible. I have read the letter sent to you by the Oakland Mills Community Association and I am in complete agreement. You are extremel...

Separate and Unequal

Remember “Separate but equal”? Remember how that really meant that Black schools languished in broken-down buildings without adequate heat or toilet facilities, with cast-off, ragged learning materials, underfunded and largely ignored? The Supreme Court struck that down in 1954. The evidence was clear that separate was not equal. Plessy v Ferguson had led to - - no, endorsed - - deeply unequal schooling and opportunities. We tend to think of Brown v Board as being purely about racial integration. It was not. It was about the logical consequences of segregation. And they were not, not, not equal. The ruling in 1954 didn’t transform public education for non-whites into a land of milk and honey by any means. But it articulated some essential truths in a way that made including everyone a legal precedent which could be relied upon and built upon. It was better than what came before it but it rested upon unsteady ground. It did not necessarily change the hearts or minds ...

Village Green/Town²

Search This Blog