It’s not hard to visualize: a major hurricane is bearing down on Central Florida and Osceola County, and tactical decisions are made and information is released from the county’s Emergency Operations Center.
The leaders who would appear in that expansive working room in that time of crisis were able to receive training at the federal level recently, and held drills in another kind of disaster: a tornado that provides little to no warning.
About 55 staffers, including EOC and other county and city staff, elected officials, senior leadership, National Weather Service employees and those from victim services and Medical Examiner units, participated in the Integrated Emergency Management Course (IEMC) at the National Emergency Management Institute in Emmitsburg, Md. last month.
Only 12 jurisdictions are chosen annually to attend the IEMC, and Osceola County was the only Florida jurisdiction selected this year.
“This way, those who are with us in the EOC during a disaster could all receive the most updated training at one time,” said Bill Litton, Osceola County’s Emergency Management Director.
Among the attendees were Kissimmee and St. Cloud mayors Olga Gonzalez and Nathan Blackwell and city managers Mike Steigerwald and Veronica Miller, St. Cloud City Council member Linette Matheny, St. Cloud Police Chief Doug Goerke, and members of the EOC, cities’ and county communications staffs.
They were able to meet with officials from other various disasters not weather-related, such as from Surfside Condominium collapse near Miami, and some even made presentations of their own, such as Goerke, who worked with the Orlando Police Department during the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting, Litton said.
“We got to hear those presentations and hear about the lessons learned,” Litton said. “We also have EOC staff in new positions (since the county last attended in 2017). But, most of all (IEMC) allows us to focus on forming local partnerships and build collaboration before another disaster occurs.”
The delegation went through a tornado exercise designed just for Osceola County. In the exercise, a pair of EF2 tornados swept through St. Cloud in the morning, striking the community center, and later another rolled through the west part of the county and Kissimmee, striking Osceola Heritage Park head-on.
“In the exercise, we had to think outside the box in the case of normallyutilized buildings for response being hit,” Litton said. “With a hurricane, you get four to five days to prepare and know what is in store. You can have advanced notice of a weather system bringing possible tornadoes, but they usually touch down without notice.”
As the event wrapped up and the delegation headed home, a line of severe weather moved through the Southeast, with deadly tornadoes striking in Mississippi.
“We saw that when we returned Monday,” Litton said, “and we talked about how that hit home for us after participating in those exercises.”
