Although many residents don’t know the name Emergency Management Agency (EMA), Porter County’s EMA has a dedicated team of men and women preparing day and night to keep everyone safe.
A key part of the greater Porter County Government, the EMA plays a critical role in preparing for and responding to a variety of emergencies.
“Not only does the EMA handle the tornado sirens, we also provide a variety of different assets that might be needed in an emergency,” said Director Lance Bella.
Prepared for both manmade and natural disasters, the Porter County EMA has tools and resources to support emergency responders throughout the county.
“For example, we can help responders with a cooling trailer in times of extreme temperatures,” Bella said. “We also have material that can assist with anything from an active shooter, to a structure fire, or to a tornado.”
Thinking about both large and small disasters, the Porter County EMA is ready to provide support to both a first responder and a citizen in need. A tour of the Porter County EMA building reveals a range of resources from high-tech command centers to essential supplies like cots and warm blankets.
Maintaining these resources is essential to the EMA and is a vital component of the county's infrastructure.
None of this would be possible without Support Services Coordinator, Commander Bill Denegaard.
“The support services coordinator’s job is to oversee and maintain the equipment,” said Denegaard. “A large part of this is overseeing the 56 tornado sirens throughout the county.”
The Porter County siren system is so intricate and state of the art that not only can the Porter County EMA begin an alert, it can also be activated remotely by the National Weather Services (NWS) computer system. Approximately 99% of all activations are triggered from the NWS computer, which is calculating thousands of data point per second. This results in far more accurate determinations of when activations should occur.
“Here at the Porter County EMA, I can use the computer to activate certain sirens or all sirens,” said Denegaard. “The National Weather Service computer system determines potential tornado paths and creates polygons of areas, which could be affected. The computer system then activates only the particular sirens within that polygon. This reduces the number of unnecessary activations."
In addition to the tornado sirens system, Denegaard monitors all the in-house equipment and ensures it is ready for use.
“We go through every asset we have regularly to make sure everything's running and everything looks good,” said Denegaard. “Using our inspection process, we will check things like the motor, belts, filters, and fluids. We check our preloaded supply bins of cots, sleeping bags, pillows, sandbags, etc. and make sure they are ready to use. Everything gets checked and maintained.”
On top of maintaining equipment, the EMA also maintains an Emergency Operations Center (EOC).
“If needed, our building can become an operations center for any incident,” said Denegaard. “We staff the center with only EMA personnel or with different command staff from each agency. Each person on assignment at the center has a different phones with a laptop to monitor and collaborate.”
Wired and ready for different technological and electrical mishaps, the Porter County EMA’s mobile command center is also available and set up for both short and long-term scenarios. This unit can be deployed to locations outside of the EMA building at a moment’s notice.
In the future, both Bella and Denegaard hope to continue strengthening the relationship between the EMA and first responders throughout the county.
Both public servants their entire lives, Bella and Denegaard know the value of this type of work and look forward to sharing what the EMA can do with all of Porter County.
“We just want to keep saying to whoever needs us, ‘Hey, what's your damage look like? What are you having trouble with? Okay, we can help with that,’” said Bella.
To learn more about the Porter County Emergency Management Agency and Porter County Government, please visit porterco.org.
