If and when a natural disaster hits Lincoln County, officials with the county’s Emergency Management Agency will be ready to help keep the public informed.
Earlier this month, county EMA Deputy Director Kimberley Kaiser and Assistant Director Ken Desmond attended an Advanced Public Information Officer Course in Maryland.
Kaiser and Desmond took the four-day course at the National Emergency Training Center in Emmitsburg, Md. from Jan.12-16, which gave them Public Information Officer certification. Public Information Officers are key to the functions of emergency operations, allowing emergency directors to perform the duties of their job while communicating vital information to the public through the available media outlets.
This class, held at what is also known as the Emergency Management Institute and National Fire Academy, was open to police, fire and other emergency personnel.
Peter Vogel, an instructor at the Academy who writes the manuals and the curriculum for all emergency service training in the United States, taught the course.
Also heading up the group were Chris Kramer, former Public Information Officer (PIO) for the Utah Olympic Games, and Dianne Walbrecker, who co-authored the source materials for the class and is a consultant for the Academy. Joining them were Rebecca Feaster, former PIO for Virginia State Police and Tom Olshanski, PIO and co-teacher for the Academy.
The course included exercises in the Joint Information Center on camera interviews, writing exercises, and press conference preparation. According to Kaiser, the class discussed the need to use less jargon and adapt their writing to the Associated Press style.
They engaged in a type four disaster scenario, tailored after hurricane Katrina. Participants worked as officials in local, county, state and federal levels of response. Participants acted as PIOs for emergency management agencies on county, state and federal levels. They also acted as local directors in this course.
Each participant chose a role and pretended to be interviewed by CNN while being filmed. Kaiser took on the role of EMA Director for the state. The filming was followed by critiques, where participants saw themselves being interviewed and could correct any mistakes they might have made.
Kaiser said the reporter for CNN was pretending to be a student and going along with the exercise. Participants had a suspicion the reporter was real, as his pager and cell phone were ringing at the time. Kaiser said this was when a U.S. Airways plane landed in the Hudson River. He later identified himself and said that the participants did a good job.
Kaiser said the class was wonderful and proved to be a good learning tool adding it is important the public gets important information in a timely manner.
“There’s a lot of stress with this,” she said. “We have to weigh the needs of the incident commander, the press and the public.”
