PITTSBORO — The News + Record spoke over Zoom on Monday, April 20, with Steve Newton, Chatham County's emergency management director, about the role of emergency management during COVID-19 and the status of the county’s operations.
You can find the full video on our Facebook page here.
So I'm sure people might, if they're familiar with emergency management, probably be familiar with what you guys do during hurricanes. But first of all, could you give us a rundown on what you guys do, what your responsibilities are?
For this event, generally anything — for hurricanes, any major disaster — our job is to identify and organize the team that's made up of the county staff and local stakeholders and partners that we're going to use to solve this problem. And that team changes over time. And so as we go through the event, and when different things become priorities, we'll bring in different folks, experts and technical experts and supply chain sources to solve the problem as best we can.
So that's a lot of what we're doing right now. You know, we we've established our team we meet regularly we share information. A lot of what emergency management's doing now is, we develop reports and we identify. We try to really get a feel for: What’s the pace of this event? What are the key measures of how we're doing? How do we measure progress? Are things getting better these days, or they're getting worse? Are they staying the same? And then we also try to anticipate future problems. Sometimes when you're faced with a significant challenge immediately in front of you, it's hard to take a step back and look at what else could go wrong a week from now, a month from now.
And then ultimately looking at what does recovery look like and how do we get there? And how do we get how do we measure what we're doing? Is what we're doing working? And then at the same time, we're still providing technical assistance on diesel spills and hazardous chemical leaks and anything else that goes bump-in-the-night.
You mentioned having a regular status report on where things are, how we're doing across Chatham County right now? What’s that report saying?
We're monitoring new cases, we're monitoring outbreaks, especially watching for outbreaks in our long-term care facilities. We're doing this across the state across the nation (for) our most vulnerable populations. So we're making sure we prioritize them for Resource Requests. And we may talk to a facility that's not experiencing an outbreak yet that's taking protective measures. We'll talk to them once a week. But if it's a facility that's actually experiencing an outbreak, we'll talk to them daily.
This is not necessarily a Chatham County issue, it's a regional to statewide, it’s a national issue. And so we're constantly trying to focus on you know, how are we doing across the state? What do we need? We need to lean forward — where do we need to lean forward in a way that doesn't affect or that supports what the state’s mission is?
How is this different from other situations emergency management has faced in recent years? What are the starkest differences between what's going on right now and dealing with a hurricane or tornado or something like that?
Usually, tornadoes and hurricanes are at least either local or regional. Hurricanes certainly be a regional, but there's help out there that we can depend on. The State of North Carolina sends help to other communities, other states on a regular basis. Every year, we're engaged in, through the emergency management systems compact, sending personnel. And we also enjoy the same. So during Hurricane Florence, we had teams here from New Hampshire and from all across the country.
Every one of us is engaged in the fight in our hometown at this point. There is nobody that's not affected by this at this point. And so that's something that we tend to take for granted during these other large-scale events, that there is help out there. And there's never a question about a willingness to help.
Each one of us has a duty to protect our own communities first. And until we get into a more stable position, we can't go home. And so that's what it is terribly frustrating for all of us that we see New York, New Jersey, Louisiana — all are struggling. Normally we would be that we were the first in line to say, ‘We're here to help. How can we help carry the load for you?’, and we can't do that right now because we remain in harm's way just like every other community across the nation.
Could you walk us through what it means that the county is under a state of emergency? What should people take away from that?
That state of emergency declaration — it's a tool that local government, state government, the federal government can use, in a broad picture to maintain order public health, safety and the welfare of our residents.
What it actually does for us, on local emergency ordinances, it triggers our Emergency Operations Plan, which is what we're falling under now, in all the different aspects that come with that. It provides the county manager with broad authorities to solve issues as they come up. And then it also provides — we haven't used it in this county — but it provides the general police power ordinances within a county or within a community, which all that means is when you hear the stay-at-home orders or anything saying that we're asking the public to restrict movement, to restrict the operation of businesses. This is the tool that allows government to do that.
And so in Chatham County, our state of emergency has activated our emergency operations plan and things along those lines, but we're falling under the state's executive order, which is a state of emergency that has the stay-at-home orders and limitations on businesses and things like that. But for us, it's a tool. It's a tool that local governments use. We hope that it also gets the attention of the residents of the public to say that this is a serious condition and that the government is shifting its focus from normal daily operations to “What do we need to do to mitigate this problem?”
One thing you guys have been been helping with during this time is PPE. What is the status of the county's stockpile/possession of PPE at this time?
So, PPE continues to be a challenge for all of us, for every community, for every discipline. What we have in place now, we have what we will consider enough stock for if there are additional outbreaks and long-term care facilities, where we can meet the short-term immediate need, until supplies come in from the state. The part of the problem: we grow too large stockpile locally, then we're in direct competition with every other community as well as the state. And so by using this approach, we're able to meet immediate needs.
We have several COVID positive patients that are identified or residents in a group home or some other setting, and they don't have all the PPE that they would need to do to manage that safely. We’re able to meet that immediate need and at the same time we're putting in a request to the state. It may take two to three days, depends on the availability. So that's where we stand.
We’re doing okay as far as our ability to meet requests for hand sanitizer. We've worked with some of our local breweries in either in Chatham or near Chatham to shift their production into hand sanitizer. So we've gotten into the business of cooking sanitizer and disinfectants. We seem to be stabilized in that to some degree. We continue to work with with some of our neighboring counties if they have a short-term need that we can help with. And the same goes for us if we've had a short term need, we've been able to reach out to some of our neighbors and say, “Hey, could you help us out with this little piece?” That means that these are for our priority facilities. It's our priority for facilities, our hospitals, nursing homes or health care facility or long-term care facilities that have active outbreaks, as well as our EMS system. That means that the next tier down in our priorities, they may not have all of the equipment that they need. So it's not saying that every facility has every piece of PPE that they need. That means our highest priorities are being met right now.
Is it a similar situation with with testing equipment as well?
That may be a better question for public health to answer. We were involved in actually requesting the test kits. There’s several different aspects to it, because it's the testing supplies, it's the testing equipment. There's also the capacity of our folks that are trying to do the testing, as well as testing in certain labs, private labs. And so that's a balancing act. And so we've partnered with labs, we partner with the hospitals, local healthcare organizations to actually to try to meet that.
How much is the county responsible for providing those things to facilities right now?
Normally, of course, we are not involved at all in providing PPE for these private facilities, these organizations, but the problem now, of course, with the supply chain limitations, it simply isn't on the market and they're not able to source it like they normally would. And so it's really a combination. Certain facilities are requesting directly from the state. Other facilities are requesting through us. We're trying to meet the the immediate, imminent needs or the acute needs, as best we can, based on our priorities or based on the priority from the CDC for the state. And so really, as long as we remain in this this condition where PPE is in just such short supply, and it's really essential that these facilities remain open and we try to protect the staff as best we can, we will continue to be engaged in providing PPE, regardless of whether it's a private facility or county-funded. We're going to do our best to make sure they have what they need.
I would say it's probably similar to feeding. We normally aren't in the business of feeding folks on a regular basis. But during this event, there's some students and some families don't have access to it. And so we're trying to play a larger role with our existing feeding infrastructure, whether it's through the schools or food pantries, just to make sure that that need is met.
What is your one takeaway that you hope that people get from this conversation from what you guys have been doing, one key point you want Chatham residents to understand during this time?
The key point for this for this conversation, and every conversation that we're having, especially dealing with states of emergency and what should I do, should not do — this is one of those few cases where every single person's choice to stay home, to wear a mask, to go to the store versus not going to the store, absolutely makes a difference.
We see during storms where some folks will have a different risk tolerance, will choose to, “I'm going to ride out the storm” or “I'm going to choose to do my own thing.” And really it's a decision that affects them and them alone. Here, each individual's choice as to whether or not to follow these guidelines could potentially have downstream effects on other people and other people's livelihoods and health.
Just the fact that it's just rare for us, that literally, every single person's choice could make a difference in the outcome of this event — so just please take that in consideration when you're deciding. I'm used to going to the grocery store three, four times a week, just because I don't know what I want to have at any given time. Change that habit. Change the habit to once a week, have a thoughtful process before you leave and go out and decide, do I really need to go out and do these errands?