From: Noel Taylor
Columbus
The Office of Emergency Preparedness (OEP) in Bartholomew County had a rich history. When I first became aware of it in 1980, it was housed in the basement of the courthouse downtown and shared office space with the American Red Cross. Kay Finke was its director; Betty Freeman served as the Red Cross executive secretary.
Those were days rich in volunteerism, when amateur radio clubs, snowmobile clubs, citizens band radio clubs, four-wheel drive clubs and many other organizations were part of an Indiana State Police program known as the Indiana Citizens Emergency Response Teams (INCERT), formed in the wake of the blizzard of 1978.
Bartholomew County’s commissioners were very supportive of the OEP. I remember Vernon Jewell being happy to help when Dale Buchanan and his amateur radio teams ran cables from the basement of the courthouse up through Jewell’s first-floor office closet, ultimately to reach the roof of the courthouse for the antennas that Buchanan’s group installed there.
Things changed. Dennis Moats eventually succeeded Kay Finke. The new EOC (Emergency Operations Center) was built on Cherry Street. Federal and state government changes shifted the name from OEP to Emergency Management Agency (EMA) and finally Columbus Emergency Management (CEM).
Moats was proactive, writing and backing grants that provided amateur radio operators with both state-of-the-art equipment for the new Cherry Street facility, and with a built-in home in the EOC conference room. During the historic flood of 2008, that room saw the mayor, police chief, sheriff and many other interests kept informed by being within earshot of amateur radio and military response at a time when landline and cellphone services were overloaded to the point of being useless. Amateur radio linked with Indianapolis directly, and coordinated with the Red Cross. Moats was prepared.
Except for 2008, the average citizen didn’t hear much from Moats. He maintained a background position and saw his job as one of maintaining readiness to serve if situations arose where true emergency response was required.
Now fast forward 10 years. The State of Indiana continues to produce public service announcements that name amateur radio as the go-to communications service “when all else fails,” but Moats is retired and his EOC counterpart Ed Reuter left for another job. Reuter’s replacement, Todd Noblitt, and Moats’ replacement, Shannan Hinton, have had all amateur radio equipment removed from the EOC.
Noblitt manages the 911 center, Hinton manages CEM and is in frequent contact with county employees and community subscribers by cellphone and texting alerts, which duplicate National Weather Service statements ranging from heat waves to freeze warnings, and adding in some of the road closures and other similar information announced on AM and FM broadcast radio. I wonder how she’s going to communicate the next time cellphone service fails.
Preparedness vs. management. You wouldn’t think that a simple name change would lead to such a shift in concept and implementation. Yet Bartholomew County is a clear example. From my perspective, that’s too bad.
