The Weston Lakes City Council has approved an emergency management training policy for the city, establishing training standards that can be used by FEMA to aid in evaluating first responder readiness in the community.
EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT POLICY – Weston Lakes has adopted a new emergency training management policy for the city.
Approval of the policy came at the recommendation of Mayor Pro-Tem Clifton Aldrich, who also serves as the city emergency management coordinator.
Aldrich said since Weston Lakes had received FEMA grant funding, the city needed to be prepared for a possible government audit on how those funds were utilized. One standard used by FEMA to conduct such audits is by evaluating against a city’s an emergency management training policy.
“FEMA audit requirements include having such a policy by which we can be judged,” Aldrich told the council. “When FEMA comes in to take a look that we’re satisfying our standards, this policy puts us in good stead with any FEMA audits.”
Aldrich also said such a policy would help the city comply with NIMS – the National Incident Management System. NIMS is a system used nationally to coordinate emergency preparedness and incident management among federal, state and local agencies, and to help those agencies be better prepared to respond in the event of a natural or man-made disaster.
Aldrich also reported on last Saturday’s open house at the city’s emergency operations center located in the Weston Lakes Country Club. During the open house, the city showcased new equipment and demonstrated how the center will serve as a central command and control facility to carry out emergency preparedness, emergency management or disaster management operations, as well as ensure continuity of operations within the city.
Approximately 75-80 people turned out for the event, including 30 of the city’s emergency management volunteers.
“I was very pleased with that,” Aldrich said. “I think the Weston Lakes volunteers can be very, very proud of their efforts. We could not do emergency management in this city without volunteers.”
Did new orleans and rest of louisiana coast receive these audits after getting one of the largest handouts in history? I bet they didn’t because they would have not even showed up for the audit because they were out at the bar with their $2K FEMA debit cards. FEMA is the people who should be audited regularly. Is FEMA a part of that worthless dept of homeland security mega-bureaucracy. Well at least someone in our state got something from those idiots at FEMA.