By B. Michael Thurlow

Fire Chief / EMA Director

Scarborough Emergency Management is the local municipal branch of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). It is a small-town department that is required under federal regulations for a community to receive certain federal reimbursements and assistance. FEMA is the nation’s emergency response coordination agency. They help bring together a variety of federal assets as well as funding to assist in times of natural or man-made disaster. Each state has an agency and ours is the Maine Emergency Management which operates out of Augusta. From there it is broken down by county organizations (ours is located in South Windham), then finally to the local level.  

The system is designed based on the premise that all emergencies are local. Scarborough EMA plans for and provides coordination between the various emergency response agencies during local emergencies and disasters.  When the event exceeds the town’s capabilities and local resources a request for additional assistance is forwarded to the county, state, and finally Federal EMA organizations.

I started in emergency management in 1978 and was the part-time director from 1980 to 2001 until I was promoted to full-time fire chief. At that time the fire chief and EMA director’s positions were combined and the EMA office became part of the fire department’s responsibilities. In those 30 years I have seen dramatic changes in emergency management. Modern EMA was born from the old days of civil defense when students in school were taught to duck and cover in fallout shelters under the threat of a nuclear attack. During this time we used to work out of a small section in the basement of the old high school and we were still stocking large aluminum cans of hard candy, World War II radiological monitoring equipment, and other fall-out shelter supplies. 

Each month one of our missions was to activate our radiological equipment, count the number of clicks of background radiation, and forward that information to the county EMA office via radio for statistical and training purposes. During the years as the nuclear threat diminished the impetus was placed on emergency preparedness planning and the name was changed to the Civil Emergency Preparedness Agency in the 1980s. 

Today FEMA is a top-level national agency and since Hurricane Katrina, it has vastly improved its planning, coordination, and assistance it is able to bring to various states during disasters. Natural disasters are now our primary mission and the town has robust emergency operational plans to help the various departments deal with those threats that we have identified are probable in our area.

The reason I chose EMA for this week’s article is because the town is in the middle of a couple of different events where EMA is taking an active role.  The first is pandemic flu planning. As I’m sure everyone is aware, federal and state governments have encouraged all individuals and communities to review emergency plans for pandemic flu. 

During the past three weeks I have been meeting with the town’s emergency management team including the school department management to review and refine Scarborough’s plan. As EMA director, I help coordinate between town departments and various outside agencies to make sure we are functioning as a team and that we are prepared to take any actions necessary to protect and serve the community.

The second reason for the timing of this article is that we are in the middle of the debris pick up from the ice storm of 2008. The ice storm was another example of those natural disasters that qualified for a Presidential Disaster Declaration that opens up federal reimbursement funding for local communities and nonprofit agencies under the federal Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act. The debris removal from this storm is being covered under that legislation.  

When a county qualifies for federal assistance it generally means the federal government will reimburse 75 percent and the state will reimburse 15 percent of the qualified costs of mitigating that event leaving the local community responsible for the remaining 10 percent. Throughout the years this program has been extremely beneficial to Scarborough and has saved taxpayers a tremendous amount of money that otherwise would have come from local property taxes. 

Emergency management is all about planning. We plan for emergencies on the local municipal level, but we also promote personal, family and business continuity planning. This pandemic flu scare provides excellent motivation to check out some of the various Web sites and other sources of information on personal and business preparedness. Everyone should have a plan for their family as well as a “go kit” and the non-perishable food and other materials necessary to survive a local disaster without any assistance for 72 hours. Businesses need to develop continuity plans for a variety of things including the potential of losing many of their employees to illness during a pandemic, how to deal with a potential reduction in business and possible cash flow issues. There are an unlimited number of sources for this information but the Maine Emergency Management Agency Web site, www.state.me.us.mems  is a good place to start.

Chief Michael Thurlow can be reached at: mthurl@ci.scarborough.me.us or 730-4201.

The Scarborough Fire, Police and Public Works Departments write a weekly feature for the Leader on duties of the departments and public safety issues.