January 5, 2018
By Paragon News Director Paul Joseph –
A recent regional health department meeting held in Elk City renewed emergency provider responsibilities when and if a disaster strikes – as it renewed relationships.
About 17 emergency providers met at Great Plains Regional Medical Center in late December to review “who does what” when a bad-case or a worst-case scenario happens.
According to Roslynn Hall, the Local Emergency Response Coordinator, the meeting was an annual event called the Beckham County Health Department Stakeholders Meeting.
Hall, who works for the state health department and has her office in Altus says – perhaps a better way to describe the team of people that she recently hosted – is more of an “all-hazards team,” not just a group brought together for pandemics and epidemics.
The meeting was a refresher of how and where individual responsibilities fit into a larger puzzle when disaster strikes.
Though her title is “local emergency response coordinator,” Hall serves a huge area in Western Oklahoma as she oversees six counties, Jackson Greer, Tillman, Harmon as well as Roger Mills and Beckham County.
Hall says she’s always on the look-out to form new alliances that can work to make things happen quicker and easier making emergency response – perhaps – less labor-intensive and far more efficient. And, the meeting definitely helped in that area.
Basically, besides reviewing who handles what during an emergency, the annual meeting renews old relationships as it offers an opportunity to make new friendships across the county and across the region.
Hall says – though the meeting is over – she’ll continue to follow up with the emergency providers making sure relationships are maintained and where she can continue finding – what she terms, “push-partners,” businesses and organizations that can pick up a heavy load providing services to people in need when an emergency happens.
Custer County’s Stakeholder’s meeting is handled out of a different area and was held a little earlier in the year.
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