One of the local facebook sites has a bit of chatter that brings into play whether the borough is creating positions and “and positions being filled without going through the proper channels, motions, votes.”

Yeah, there really is, and has been, a municipal “EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT COORDINATOR” position in the borough — there’s an emergency management coordination in every municipality in Lancaster County. And in every municipality in every county in the Commonwealth. And in every municipality in every county in every state in the nation.

And there has been since that date that precipitated the development and subsequent institutionalization of the National Incident Management System — September 11, 2001.

And that’s a really good thing. When something really bad happens anywhere across this nation, the Multi-agency Coordination Entity [also known as the Emergency Management Coordinator] has these responsibilities:

• Ensuring that each involved agency is providing situation and resource status
  information.
• Establishing priorities between incidents and/or Area Commands in concert with
  the Incident Command or Unified Command.
• Acquiring and allocating resources required by incident management personnel.
• Coordinating and identifying future resource requirements.
• Coordinating and resolving policy issues.
• Providing strategic coordination.

The Emergency Management Coordinators at all levels [local municipality, county, state and national have are charged with developing, maintaining and revising:

• Plans.
• Procedures.
• Communications.
• Staffing.
• Other capabilities necessary for improved incident management.

Know what? All of this information about emergency management and lots of other national, state and local laws are available online; all anyone has to do is “google it”.

For the most part, the definitive answers are not on facebook. They’re on federal, state, county and local websites.

So here is where to start looking for answers:

Columbia Emergency Management | http://www.columbiapa.net/contact-us/

Lancaster County Emergency Management | https://www.lancema.us

Pennsylvania emergency Management |  https://www.pema.pa.gov/Pages/Default.aspx

Federal Emergency Management | https://www.fema.gov

Pennsylvania State Law on Emergency Management | Click here. “Each
political subdivision of this Commonwealth is directed and authorized to establish a local emergency management organization in accordance with the plan and program of the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency. Each local organization shall have responsibility for emergency management, response and recovery within the territorial limits of the political subdivision within which it is organized and, in addition, shall conduct such services outside of its jurisdictional limits as may be required under this part.”

The National Incident Management System | https://www.fema.gov/national-incident-management-system and https://www.fema.gov/media-library-data/1508151197225-ced8c60378c3936adb92c1a3ee6f6564/FINAL_NIMS_2017.pdf

FREE online courses to learn about Incident Management | https://training.fema.gov/is/crslist.aspx

Whitehall Township Emergency Management webpage | Perhaps when the borough’s promised new Website is launched, it’ll have a more informative page as this Pennsylvania municipality does: http://www.whitehalltownship.org/em_about.html

We’re not anti-facebook; it is a great platform. For some things! In fact, many municipalities, government agencies and — even the Federal Emergency Management Agency have facebook pages that are used to convey factual data. They’re factual and helpful in disaster scenarios … and anytime.

What facebook is not, though, for many users, is an absolute fact-finding source.