CERT in Action!
Morgan County, IN CERT Assists in Flood Response
It’s difficult to capture in words the awesome devastation caused by the flooding that ravaged central Indiana in June 2008. How can someone who wasn’t there begin to imagine what 11 inches of rain in 8 hours looks like? Morgan County CERT coordinator Mike Ellis suggests logging on to YouTube. There, you’ll find several homemade videos documenting the storm and its aftermath. While the 12 members from the CERT Program that Ellis oversees may not appear in the videos, they were there, lending their support to the recovery effort after being activated by Morgan County Emergency Management Director Jeff Neal.
“Our first response was to assist with sandbags and directing traffic,” Ellis said. “We played primarily a support role. I became the volunteer coordinator for the next six weeks, and we helped hand out food and disaster kits.” The flood closed a nearby hospital for five months and wiped out 75 percent of local farmers’ crops. Morgan County’s CERT Program held a meeting in October to discuss its involvement in the response and decided that the team’s activities had gone well, given the circumstances. As for lessons learned, Ellis said that the team agreed to have a larger staging area for future emergencies.
For more information, please visit vcomc.org.