‘Emergency management is everybody’s responsibility’: Shelburne preps for disasters with volunteer training

SHELBURNE — Emergency Management Director Tom Williams says different disasters require different responses, and responses can vary based on resource availability. That’s why Shelburne Emergency Operations Center volunteers train monthly to be prepared for anything that might come their way.

For their February training, volunteers at the Emergency Operations Center practiced what to do in the event of a train derailment. Emergency response would begin with the Emergency Operations Center being activated and volunteers being summoned to report to their command room at the Shelburne Police Station.

“The staff here will receive a call and we have what we call RTOs, radio telephone operators, so we have a radio set up here,” Williams said. “A message will come in, we have a person on the operations board, very similar to a military operation. … As people come in, they have to sign in, there’s an activation checklist and they get right to work down the line to get this operation center up and running.”

Williams, who retired after 42 years in the Marines as a lieutenant colonel, said these non-emergency, “blue sky times” are the best occasion to prep for emergencies, and Shelburne’s emergency management team has been training using tactics learned in the military.

“What we’re doing now is what we call blue skies. There’s no emergency event, so what we’re trying to do is, first of all, educate the residents from the town of Shelburne that we’re here and we can be relied on during the emergency event in support of the people out in the field doing the work,” Williams said.

The Emergency Operations Center serves as the command center during emergency events. Stocked with maps, radios, phones, batteries and other emergency supplies, including a coffee station, the room has everything Williams and his team of volunteers need to coordinate with police, firefighters, the Highway Department, health officials and state agencies to deploy resources as needed.

“I was appointed about four years ago and this was just an empty room,” Williams recalled.

Williams said he’s been working with the Emergency Management Committee, comprised of various town department heads, and the center’s public information team to strengthen the town’s emergency preparedness. This has included holding trainings, creating response plans for different emergency scenarios, developing evacuation routes and public outreach to promote preparedness among residents.

“Emergency management is not just this group here or the town leadership. [The Federal Emergency Management Agency] says the responsibility and the coordination for emergency management is everybody’s responsibility,” Williams said. “It starts with the individual preparing themselves, and then it’s the family preparing itself, and then once the families are prepared, the community or the neighborhood prepares itself. It’s just like building blocks … everybody’s involved.”

During trainings, the volunteer team practices taking calls, filling out weather reports, keeping track of operation logs, and noting incident and resource locations on the map, as well as completing post-action reports.

“The whole idea is to review what happened, compared to what should have happened,” Williams said. “And out of that comes a to-do list of what to do to improve or correct whatever didn’t go quite as expected.”

Kristine Jelstrup, the Emergency Operations Center’s public information officer, said Shelburne Emergency Management has a Facebook page and a page on the town website to share information with residents, both during emergencies and ahead of time so they know how to best prepare.

“Our task has been to come up with every eventuality, like a fire or overturned railroad car, a flood, and try to have templates ready so that messages can go out on Blackboard,” Jelstrup said. The town uses Blackboard to send out text messages and make phone calls to residents who sign up, and the program has been used to send out information about winter parking bans and to share emergency notifications when necessary.

Williams said he has approximately 10 volunteers, eight of whom regularly show up for the monthly trainings, and he is always looking for more people who can help operations run smoothly during emergency events.

“We’re always looking for more volunteers. A real event would probably go 24 hours a day and there would be two 12-hour shifts that we would have,” Williams said. “So we’re always looking to expand our team.”