Declaration Of City Wide Emergency Document Archived

At the April 8 board of aldermen meeting, a Declaration of City Wide Emergency document was included in the agenda packet, listed under the consent agenda. It became a point of discussion when Alderman Jason Addison pointed it out, questioning if it was to declare a drill.

EMA Mike Bumgarner then clarified that the document is merely for preparedness in case of a city-wide emergency in the future.

"If we [emergency management] were to become involved in any type of city emergency... one of the steps in the process is, we would ask for the mayor to declare a city emergency," he explained to the council. "This gives me more flexibility, and it gives our police chief and our emergency services more operating room when we declare a city emergency. Maybe it would be to get people out of harm's way, maybe it would be to do our best to protect property, perhaps to avoid a looting situation--those kind of things that if, heaven forbid, we were to have some kind of event with a structure, it would give us the ability to limit sightseers and those kinds of things."

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