Grants Help Alabama Authorities Prepare for Disasters

(TNS) — A two-part grant is helping local hazardous materials planners prepare for disaster.

The Morgan County Commission on Tuesday authorized its chairman to enter into a contract with JH Consulting to provide services for the Hazardous Materials Emergency Preparedness Grant. The $23,950 grant comes from the Alabama Emergency Management Agency and includes $19,160 in federal funds and a $4,790 local match.

“This is part two of a grant we got last year,” Morgan County Emergency Management Agency Director Jonathan Warner told The Daily after the meeting. “Last year we had the same company come in and do a commodity flow study.”

A commodity flow study tells emergency responders what chemicals are coming into the city, how they are arriving and where, he said. The first grant for about $22,000 covered that study, he said.

“They came in for two weeks and watched 20 spots in the county and just monitored what was coming in over the roads, railway and on the water,” Warner said. “That gave us information about what was coming in on a daily basis and what chemicals we are most likely to encounter on a roadway hazmat incident. We felt with the amount of industry Morgan County has, we knew we had a lot of chemicals that could cause a problem coming into the county. The study kind of confirmed what we already knew.”

The results of the study were shared with Decatur Fire & Rescue as well as 23 other fire and police departments.

“The information was very useful to them,” Warner said.

Decatur Fire Chief Tracy Thornton said he was not surprised to learn there were a lot of chemicals coming in via two rail systems, pipelines, trucks and barges. He said his entire department is hazmat trained.

“We hope we don’t have to use it,” Thornton said. What his department did learn from the first part of the study was more about the quantity of each chemical coming in.

“Plants, industries and businesses have to report chemicals to us, so we already had a good idea what chemicals are in city and we make sure we are prepared in case we have to mitigate those situations,” Thornton said.

Warner said part two of the study, which the grant in question covers, will enable the county to know if it has the trained responders and equipment needed to handle any incident.

“We are blessed with trained responders and equipment in this county,” Warner said. “I could see an incident growing where we would have to get resources outside the county — a large chemical spill or railroad incident could grow to where we need responders from other counties. But it would have to be a large incident for us to go outside because we have a lot of resources in Morgan County.”

The beauty of the studies is not just the benefits it brings to emergency planning.

“This information could help us apply for future grants by having the information and being able to prove what comes into county,” Warner said.

© 2024 The Decatur Daily (Decatur, Ala.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.