(Submitted Photo)

Charleston to the rescue

By: Ashlei Maltman/City Reporter

Posted: 7/3/08

With the flooding of the Mississippi River, the Illinois Incident Management Team was sent to help affected areas.

Kris Phipps, Charleston fire chief, Pat Goodwin, assistant fire chief, and Gary Hanebrink, safety officer at Eastern, are all a part of the Coles County Incident Management Team and were sent to provide assistance in Quincy and Alton.

"The team is a state resource trained to operate and assist in managing an incident or event," Hanebrink said.

To join the Incident Management Team, Phipps, Goodwin, and Hanebrink took classes for personal interest. Goodwin and Phipps were already partially involved with the National Incident Management System. They then took more classes to be on the Incident Management Team.

Phipps was sent to Alton to help with the planning and forming of an incident action plan. These plans include evacuation procedures and the monitoring of the levies.

The incident action plans spell out who on the response teams would be doing what, when, where, the working hours, and how they are going to get to the designated area, Goodwin said.

"Basically there were a lot of meetings," Phipps said. "We didn't really get our hands dirty. We were writing the incident action plans."

There were three briefings a day in Alton, and Phipps' job was to help make plans from the briefings.

"It was good training that you couldn't get out of a classroom or book," Phipps said. It was very valuable and a great experience."

Hanebrink and Goodwin were both deployed to Quincy. They developed plans to distribute water to the cities' 50,000 citizens. Hanebrink's job was to monitor the safety of volunteers, the National Guard and incoming resources from Rock Island County to Calhoun County.

"I felt like I did some good," Hanebrink said. "We were working with a state agency, providing the best case scenarios for safety issues and hazardous conditions."

When Hanebrink first arrived, there were 16 people helping in Quincy. There were 66 people at the scene when he was permitted to go home.

"I was taken by the support of the citizens," Hanebrink said. "Many helped fill sandbags, along with trucks from Springfield and firefighters from Champaign."

Goodwin was deployed Sunday, June 14, and spent a week in Quincy. His job was with planning and logistics. He worked with the Red Cross, police departments, fire departments, corps of engineers, the National Guard and Public Health.

The height of the water at Quincy is not as much of a concern now as the duration the water has been up on the levies, Goodwin said. The water has been at that height for so long that the levies are becoming saturated, which increases the chances of failure.

"There was a lot of coordination, a lot of hard work, and thousands of workers and responders," Goodwin said. "There were many groups of people and it takes all the sections to put things together."

They made evacuation plans for places such as nursing homes, and dealt with water supply issues, such as distribution. They also had plans for fire emergencies because if the water plant went under, there would be no hydrants working in Quincy.

"It was a lot of phones, paperwork and computers for me," Goodwin said.

The city of Quincy is about 150 feet above the river and made an ideal spot for hotels and meeting areas, Goodwin said. There were briefings twice a day and many put in 12 to 13-hour days.

Phipps and Goodwin both went to New Orleans for two weeks after Hurricane Katrina.

"It ranks right up close to being as bad an incident as New Orleans," Goodwin said.

New Orleans, Alton, and Quincy have been the only places they have been needed so far, but they are prepared whenever they might be called to action.

Ashlei Maltman can be reached at 581-7942 or can be reached at anmaltman@eiu.edu.