Four Corners Emergency Management Homepage

2011 Conference

Another great year for the Four Corners Emergency Management conference. The 2011 conference was held on Nov 30, Dec 1, and Dec 2, 2011 at the Radisson Hotel in Branson, Mo. The conference had an attendance of over 100 attendees and focused on the Joplin, Mo tornado. The F5 tornado occurred on May 22, 2011 and destroyed millions of dollars worth of homes and businesses and killed 162 people.

The first day of conference was a seminar by the National Weather Service offices from Springfield, Mo, Tulsa, Ok, and Wichita, Ks. The NWS gave a briefing on how the storm was tracked and the amount of time given to the Southwest Missouri area for the tornado warnings. NWS also was asking for future input into how they should proceed in doing immediate notification to EM for the storms. Most of the notifications are done by conference calls prior to the event but a more immediate notification needs to be done when a large storm event is occurring.

The second day of conference was a planned table top exercise on the tornado. The exercise was divided into four groups and each group was to look at the tornado and give input in response and recovery efforts that was done and the good and bad things that came from it. Communications was again one of the top priorities that caused some of the problems with the responders to the area. Areas of how to check in the responders, where to place them, where to house them, where to place the massive amounts of donations, and the massive amount of rescue efforts occurring at the time were all a high priority.

The third day of the conference was a talk done by Randy Duncan, Sedgwick County Kansas Emergency Manager. He discussed how emergency management came about in the early years and the current and future plans for Emergency Management in the city, county, state, and federal levels.

Candy Adams, who has been the leader for the group for several years, announced that she will no longer be able to do the job. Her duties with the State of Missouri is taking up her time. She will continue to attend the quarterly meetings and conference. Steve Palladino from Oklahoma Emergency Management will be taking the duties and will chair the 2012 Conference. The 2012 conference will be held in Branson, Mo Dec 5, 6, and 7th, 2012 at the Radisson Hotel.

2011 Conference Presentations

All materials from 2011 Conference are in Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) Click link below materials to get or update your PDF Reader.

Note: These are large prsentations and may take time to display depending on your Internet connection. Joplin Rising is very large and will take a minute or two to display on some high speed connections.

Future of Emergency Management (.PDF)
Planning for Future Climate Change (.PDF)
2011 Conference Critiques (.PDF)

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