Williamsburg County Emergency Management Division is staffed by 9 full time and 1 part time staff members which on a daily basis perform tasks of mitigation and preparation of any disaster that may occur and affect the citizens and visitors of Williamsburg County.
Mitigation task may include working with federal, state and local agencies to make sure that if a disaster does occur, the hardships and problems that may normally occur will be as least as possible. Educating the children on how to escape their homes if a fire were to occur to working with public works officials to have areas that flood cleaned and maintained to lessen the water impact from minor storms.
Preparation efforts occur daily, also. From past history of what may be needed during a hurricane, we attempt to have those supplies on hand, so if a storm is predicted to impact our area, a rush for supplies don't have to happen and then we are left with not enough supplies for our citizens. We also attempt to educate the public on preparation efforts by holding knowledge based community meetings like the "Operation to Go" sessions that were given back in 2018. Also, partnering with local schools and community organizations to have booths at events to hand out literature.
We did receive a grant to purchase a Surrey Educational Trailer. The trailer give our staff the opportunity to educate citizens on fire safety, storm safety and earthquake safety with a more hand-on approach. We can go to school, churches and other organizational facilities and teach these safety guidelines to attempt to have the students/citizens learn what they can do in certain situations. We are not able at this time to carry this trailer out due to the current pandemic, but hopefully we will be able to resume very soon.