With tornadoes devastating Tennessee early Tuesday, killing at least 25 people, Warsaw Mayor Joe Thallemer brought up tornado readiness at the Warsaw-Wayne Fire Territory meeting Tuesday afternoon.
He also brought up preparedness for the coronavirus.
Thallemer said he and City Councilman and WWFT board member Mike Klondaris talked Tuesday morning a little bit about tornado readiness, given what happened in Nashville, Tenn.
“Just reminds us ‘tis the season,” Thallemer said. “And going through my State of the City remarks, I know I’m going to talk about the fifth tornado siren that was installed last year up north next to Zimmer Biomet. So we’ve made a lot of significant progress with updating those sires to the benefit of the community.”
Thallemer will give his State of the City at 12:30 p.m. March 12 at the Center Lake Pavilion. Lunch, with a reservation through the Kosciusko Chamber of Commerce, starts at 11:30 a.m.
The city plans to eventually place nine tornado sirens around the community, with one new siren put up every year until all nine are up.
Thallemer said the siren at fire station No. 1 was replaced several years ago, “and every year, we’ve just been knocking them down. So that’s a good thing.”
Another help for the community in case of an emergency like a tornado is the mobile app – CivicReady – set up through the city, he said. CivicReady is a mass notification system for local governments.
“I would encourage all of our citizens to get on and get signed up for. It pushes timely notifications for many things, weather emergencies being one. Again, it’s just another tool,” Thallemer said. “These storms come up as quick as they do and deadly as they can be, the sirens help. I know this CivicReady app is going to help as well.”
Then he moved into a discussion about the coronavirus, which officially is named COVID-19 and originated in Wuhan, China. It’s now spread to dozens of countries around the world with tens of thousands of people infected and over 3,000 people confirmed dead.
“The coronavirus, I know we’re trying to keep ahead of it. If at some time it becomes problematic in our community, our county, our Homeland Security district and state, we certainly have to be prepared,” Thallemer said.
He has contacted both of the local hospitals – Kosciusko Community Hospital and Parkview Warsaw – and talked to them about their readiness “just because I am asked and want to know the appropriate preparedness that they’ve come through,” he said.
Thallemer noted he’s also talked to Fire Chief Mike Wilson a little about it, and Kosciusko County Emergency Management Director Ed Rock sent out an update from the Department of Homeland Security Tuesday about state readiness.
Thallemer said it was important that everyone knew the city was looking into it. “We hope that it doesn’t come to that, but if it does, from what I understand, the (Center for Disease Control) website is probably the most up-to-date source of information – talking about the number of cases, location of cases, how people are tested, quarantine situation, all of that. It’s updated, I would say, a couple of times a day. We think it’s not going to happen here, but we want to be ready if indeed this pandemic does get into our state and potentially into our community” Thallemer said.
A news release from the Indiana State Department of Health issued Thursday said the state has no confirmed cases of COVID-19 and no one in the state was suspected of being infected at that time. Coronavirus is thought to be spread mainly person-to-person between people in close contact (within 6 feet) when an infected person coughs or sneezes. Symptoms include cough, fever and shortness of breath. The ISDH website at in.gov/isdh and the CDC website at cdc.gov/COVID19, and both contain updated information.
Chris Fancil, WWFT EMS coordinator, said he probably gets four emails a day from the state, CDC and the county health department “constantly touching base on where we’re at, what’s going on, what preparations have been made both nationally and within the state and even locally.”
He said he talked to Tony Doyle, Lutheran EMS, earlier Tuesday about “what their plan to respond was if we were to have anything. And 95 Masks, which are particulate filter masks that have been recommended for health care for years. It’s a pretty common thing. And we’re just trying to stay on top of where these cases are and what this looks like. And what we should be prepared to do.”
Homeland Security District 2 has stockpiled resources that Fancil said they can call Ed Rock about and get them “here really quickly if we needed different resources through them – whether it’s masks or gowns or just whatever it might be. Everyone is on top of it. At this point, we’re just monitoring what’s going on around us. So far, so good, but we want to be ready in case something happens.”
Thallemer said one issue could be having a place to quarantine a significant amount of people if there’s an outbreak. He said that got him thinking about if the city should be thinking about what facility could be used for that purpose.
“We’ve got to consider some kind of location in case that happened, that we needed an area for a large number of people to be quarantined,” he said, suggesting to Fancil to ask the county if there’s any guidelines for that.
Fancil said when he talked to Doyle, Doyle was also concerned that a lot of the face masks were made in China so many were recalled, creating a shortage in getting new ones.
“However, the district has stockpiled enough of those, Lutheran has stockpiled some. So we’re fine. But it’s just curious to know that because they’re manufactured in the country where we think (COVID-19) has originated, it’s causing problems,” Fancil said. “We’re on top of it. We have to get people together to make sure we’re absolutely prepared for the possibility.”
Thallemer said, “We’ve got a responsibility because we’re first responders to be prepared for this. … We just need to make sure that we are communicating back and forth, staying abreast of these changes and the movement of this thing. No widespread panic here, just making sure we’re staying in front of it. … I think it’s important that we’re all discussing it and preparing if we would need to.”
