Health and Protection Committee reviews FEMA protocal at February meeting

WAITSBURG—The Waitsburg Community Health and Protection Committee met for its regular monthly meeting on Tuesday, February 15. The six committee members, Jillian Henze, Bill Rodgers, Lanny Adams, Cameron Hedges, Jim Romine, and Terry Lawhead, tuned in to the Zoom meeting.

Chairperson Jillian Henze started the meeting with a brief update on the COVID-19 situation in Walla Walla County, sharing that positivity rates seem to be going down in the area. As of Monday, February 14, there were 886 Walla Walla County active cases and 12 hospitalizations., There were 13 active cases in Columbia County as of February 15. Over the past week, both Walla Walla and Columbia Counties reported two additional COVID-19 related deaths.

Henze said the state announced the end of outdoor masking on February 18. She anticipated that Governor Inslee would call a press conference regarding the indoor mask mandate by the end of the week. She did note that school mandates may differ from state mandates.

During the new business portion of the meeting, Henze reflected on conversations held last summer regarding fireworks and the City’s limitations on temporary bans. She said new legislation is being proposed to allow cities and municipalities to ban fireworks after 90 days of accepting an ordinance. Previously, cities had to wait one year before implementing a fireworks ban. The new legislation would also allow municipalities to prohibit fireworks during dangerously dry conditions immediately.

Bill Rodgers expressed concerns about enforcing new ordinances, noting the difficulties with enforcement when illegal fireworks were used in the city limits last year.

Later in the meeting, Lanny Adams shared some Incident Command System (ICS) literature used by the Incident Management Type 3 Team he serves on through the DOC. According to FEMA, Type 3 designates a multi-agency/multi-jurisdictional team used for extended incidents. Adams referred to one of the books as the “incident management bible” and highly recommended that the city purchases a copy. He said he would provide a link should the city be interested.

Adams also shared two documents available through FEMA, the same as those he gave to the Waitsburg Christian Church during the 2020 flooding response. The forms provide clear directions for planning during emergency situations, lay out information including tasks and resources needed, and help formulate a plan to move forward. He also shared a document that helped determine safety hazards and how to mitigate them. Adams added that these forms were beneficial for the logistics team in incident management.

Henze agreed that the documents would be very nice to have. Waitsburg Christian Church pastor Cameron Hedges said he thought there were some briefer versions of the documents at the church, and Adams offered to drop more off if needed.