Prepared for any emergency

Ogle County Emergency Management coordinator Tom Richter plans for incidents

Posted 1/3/19

When disaster strikes in Ogle County, Tom Richter is the person behind the scenes coordinating the appropriate agencies and obtaining resources to get the situation back to normal.

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Prepared for any emergency

Ogle County Emergency Management coordinator Tom Richter plans for incidents

Posted

When disaster strikes in Ogle County, Tom Richter is the person behind the scenes coordinating the appropriate agencies and obtaining resources to get the situation back to normal.

As the county’s emergency management coordinator, Richter’s duties not only revolve around disasters but in the preparations whether it’s for the county or assisting schools and health care facilities with their plans. And as new information arrives daily from the state and federal government or from educational seminars and conferences, Richter passes that on to the appropriate agencies.

“My job is to ensure those people understand what the process is, why we are doing the planning that we are and that they understand what their roles and responses are,” he said. “We get threat information all the time and how it is impacting us. I pass that info when I can to all the local entities, forwarding to local partners all the time. It’s my job to stay on top of those issues, amend the annexes in our emergency operations plan and to investigate best practices in dealing with that.”

He added that his job is to ensure everyone is kept up to date and aware of the current issues and threats.

Local events

In his four years as coordinator Richter has coordinated emergency responses for the six disasters including the tornadoes, one in April 2015 and one in February 2017, along with flooding events and a straight-line windstorm.

The most recent was the summer of 2018 flooding mostly affecting the Rochelle area. During that time and the months subsequent to the event, Richter was in communications with neighboring state coordinators gauging rising river levels that led their way to the swollen rivers and creeks in Ogle County.

Even with planning, Richter knows there is always room for improvement.

“No plan, even though we do a great job planning, but no plan survives a disaster or any situation. Something always comes up, whether there was a hole in the plan or we weren’t completely prepared or an asset wasn’t available,” he acknowledged. “After the incident, we complete an AAR, or After Actual Report. We sit down post incident, go through the set of protocols, what happened, what the response was, how well did we implement it, what worked well and what didn’t get implemented and why not. We also review how we can fix that and how we can train to do better … or were there physical assets we need to obtain to address some of those issues. It’s a constant cycle, that’s my job to do that. Address those points so we continually improve those best practices.”

It is not only after disasters or drills that emergency operation plans get refined. Take for instance last month’s bomb threat that impacted Rochelle Community Hospital and three other locations throughout the county. The proverb about every cloud having a silver lining could indeed apply in that situation — appearing bad on the surface but in the end having a good aspect.

“The recent bomb threat, which folks did a great job responding to, we need to take those seriously. But that’s the kind you want to have where you can activate the plan, work through that with minimal threat to the public, but you get to find the holes in it,” Richter said. “You get to fix it, meet your partners and have a discussion of a real-life event.”

Emergency operations center

It has been a little over 18 months since the county’s operation center opened in Rochelle. Located in the lower level of the county building on Lincoln Highway the operations center features several long tables with individual stations for any agencies that might be responding in the event of an emergency.

All of the people dispatched to the emergency operations center work in unison, each playing a key part in the overall effort to mitigate the situation.

At each station is a laptop and phone; above are placards denoting each of the departments. Richter explained each are strategically positioned throughout the room; there is a section for the policy group, which helps make decisions and gives strategic direction to the responders. Another section is for the strategic support staff that includes a situation unit leader who gathers all the intelligence concerning the incident.

“The strategic support staff determines where we are at in the response … whether we are winning or losing in the situation. They are also responsible for overseeing all the displays that may be necessary for briefings, what we call display processing,” Richter explained. “They could be portraying maps on screens or plotting a major map to give visual reinforcement to decision makers.”

Another section houses the logistics team that handles any equipment needs or incidentals such as portable toilets or meals. The resource section helps to track incoming needs and a written record if a disaster declaration would need to be made. There is also a finance section to track the accumulating costs and process any claims.

Richter explained other agencies have a place too, including utilities and the Red Cross. There are also spots for MABAS (Mutual Aid Box Alarm System), public health, the DNR (Dept. of Natural Resources) and the Illinois State Police.

“Many who staff during a large-scale exercise or emergency aren’t from Ogle only because those local folks may be adversely affected,” Richter said. “And also, our own people can’t stay here forever; they need to get rest too. Our neighbors are here to help … there are several entities, Exelon, Com Ed, Nicor, hospitals, law enforcement, public works. All those coalition partners work together. We all have standing mutual aid agreements to offer assistance at no cost. All their resources are free up to five days. Most counties are part of that.”

Declaring disasters

Richter explained by emergency operation centers’ definition, a disaster is a situation that is greater than the resources a community has to deal with the issue at hand. There is also a level of hierarchy to declaring a disaster.

When a community is out of resources to effectively manage the situation, Richter can make a recommendation to the Ogle County board chairman to declare a county emergency. This will allow countywide resources to assist local jurisdictions.

“We cannot approach the state until we have utilized everything in the county, then to mutual aid to our neighbors. Once we have reached the point we have tapped into our neighbors’ resources and they can’t further assist, then we can approach the state through a regional liaison who can approach Springfield and the governor can approve or not approve assistance from the state,” he explained.

Richter said one of the biggest misconceptions the general public has is thinking the county or the state or federal governments are going to give money if they have damages. An exception could be if an arm of government has a budgeted line item for unmet needs of citizens.

Even in the event of a large-scale disaster, Richter explained money that is donated can only be issued after processing insurance claims are exhausted.

“During the April 2015 tornado, we had lots of donations come in to Ogle County and the Rochelle Area Community Foundation. The Long Term Recovery Committee managed that, they did an outstanding job. But those monies could only be distributed above and beyond insurance costs, what is covered by insurance. It has to be an uninsured loss and unmet needs,” Richter said.

This is where disaster preparedness comes in.

Richter said families need to have a home disaster plan and be prepared to support themselves for a minimum of 72 hours.

“That is a huge misconception that their local government is going to come immediately and assist them. Not that they are not trying to. Certainly, in this county every municipality is interested in public welfare and safety and security of their citizens,” he said. “But depending on what type of disaster it is and the complexity will determine the access people have to get help. It is important for people to be self-supporting for 72 hours. Then the recovery process and our neighbors will begin to help us. We will slowly get to you, open shelters and provide public assistance as resources allow. From a financial standpoint, no one is going to come and rescue them. They have to understand that.”

Several items to be prepared with include food and water, but also to have family records in a safe and accessible location. Birth and marriage certificates and insurance policies should be scanned and kept on a portable thumb drive.

Richter said before an incident occurs is a good time to revisit insurance policies including what types of disasters are covered. Policies covering water damage from a breaking pipe could be different than flooding from a severe summer rainstorm or a river overflowing.

“Again, the government is not coming with a checkbook. I think’s that the biggest misconception is people are going to come along and make us whole. Not true,” he said. “So, the more prepared they can be, the more they practice that plan and ensure those essentials are kept in a safe place, the better off they will be. It’s easy to get caught up in everyday life and keep going along until something comes along … getting into a routine thinking that’s not going to happen to them.”

Rooted in emergency response

Richter attended college in South Dakota and worked for the forest service there one summer, experiencing his first time fighting a wildfire nearly 41 years ago in 1977. After a dabbling of social work at a residential treatment facility in Wyoming, he landed a job at a fire department. The move back to Illinois found Richter working for MABAS and the fire service institute, concurrently overseeing a construction management project for a local engineering firm. After a brief stint as the interim Ogle County Emergency Management coordinator after the previous one resigned, Richter applied for the permanent position and acquired the job four years ago. He also wrote a technical manual for fighting wildland fires and has worked with a team in the Western U.S. helping to train other wildland firefighters.

He admits there is no shortage of work even though many have wondered what he does all day if there is not a disaster to attend to.

“There have been a number of hazardous materials situations in Ogle County that the public doesn’t know about. It gets mitigated right away,” Richter said. “I’ve also assisted in many situations including helping our neighbors … the Lee County pipeline explosion, an incident in Winnebago County. The day to day things I do is a lot of response stuff assisting first responders.”

This past July, Richter assisted with a full-scale active intruder drill at Kings School.

“Between planning, exercises, drills and updates I keep busy. We don’t see that from the outside,” he added. “These incidents are getting handled appropriately, everyone’s working together to manage these smaller day-to-day things so that they don’t become large scale things. It also prepares us again for larger scale. If we are all doing our jobs, we are helping the public be safer and we are more prepared to assist them and help them recover.”

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 Pictured above, the Emergency Operations Center in Rochelle.