That's been the case today, Wednesday, Aug. 18, as flood waters rose across Macon County, starting in the east and working west from Red Boiling Springs.
Early reports indicated eight inches of rain fell on the county during a 12-hour stretch from Tuesday night into Wednesday morning.
As flood waters rose, one local agency was ready, quickly taking action to avoid serious troubles.
All of the emergency agencies in Macon County work so cohesively in trying times thanks to efforts of the Emergency Management Agency.
“It's a little-known organization within the community,” said Keith Scruggs, who is the Emergency Management Director for Macon County.
“When we have multi-agency responses to a particular event, whether it be a severe weather event or a highway safety event or something like that, where we've got several agencies involved and there's going to be cleanup involved and all that, we initiate our Macon County Emergency Response Plan.”
The Emergency Response Plan is a book that details what would need to be done in the case of a major event.
“And then we start coordinating what goes on and what emergency services do. We get them in each individual role. This includes police departments ambulance services, all of it. All of it comes under Emergency Management, at a point in time when the event gets real big, and there's a lot of things going on, we open up what's know as an EOC, an Emergency Operations Center. Right now, this building here at the fire department serves as our EOC.
“The county recently received a grant for $750,000. Out of some of those funds, we're going to build our own Macon County Emergency Operations Center, and that will be for all emergency services in Macon County to coordinate out of and use as a training facility, and that's coming in the near future. Right now, we're in the process of securing land and getting everything ready. The money's done on the table. That's something new that Macon County will have. In the past, during the tornado, we used the ambulance service because our generator here was tore up. Basically, the fire hall right now serves as the emergency ops center, but we're proud to say that we're going to get our own. What that would do is, say if we had another flood event or whatever, your community leaders and someone from each department comes to that center. All these agencies come together in that center and we coordinate what's going on—what's needed, what resources can we get? This gives a chance for all the agencies to interact and get the resource flow going.
“I'm the direct liason with the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency, which is basically the same kind of agency on a statewide level.
“It's a pretty interesting concept. It's something they've come up with in the past few years, but it's working out real well for us. The tornado was the first major event that we had had and used a fully functional emergency operations center, and it worked out quite well.
“We're extremely proud of what happened during the tornado. Our county rebounded tremendously better than the Gulf has during Hurricane Katrina or some of these other big events that they've had.”
Since 9/11, of course, the federal government created the Department of Homeland Security, and there's been a lot of money that has flowed down from the federal government from the State of Tennessee out to local communities, and we administer that. We develop needs. We try to figure out what kind of radio communication systems we need, what kind of equipment-specialty equipment, hazardous materials equipment. We make sure all the departments get some of this money. In the last ten years, we've accumulated a massive amount of equipment for Macon County that's not cost the county a penny, and it's mostly specialty equipment used in times of severe weather or hazardous material incidents, or something of that magnitude, which hasn't cost the citizens a penny, but we have it available to us.
“I've been Emergency Management Director since about 1988, I think. Back then, it was called the Civil Defense Director, but up in the '90s, they changed that to the Emergency Management Agency so it kind of had a change in flow. In the old days, the Civil Defense Director was kind of over the Cold War deal and managed the shelters and stuff like that.
“In the new day, without the Cold War, of course, terrorism's been a big thing, and, even in a small community like this, that's caused a lot of changes. We even have a different look at how we look at things, and we've studied and mitigated anything that might happen to Macon County. We're fortunate in Macon County. We don't have any major interstates, we don't have any major rivers. We don't have any major bodies of water or railroads. So that kind of takes a lot away from us, but, yet, we still have to concentrate on being able to handle something. A 7-47 may fall out of the sky out in a field at Haysville, God forbid that ever happen, but, with that said, we have the capabilities of handling something like that were it to ever happen.
“Mitigation's a big thing, and that's a word you probably hadn't heard until the 2000s, and what mitigation is, is where we take a specific county, and we sit down and we look at that county, and we see what the problems might be, what could happen.
“We've got a preset thing we do, and preset set of rules we use to handle these events. We use the Rescue Squad quite often in flood situations to do rescues. During the tornado, we used a lot of police officers, because we had a lot of vandalism and a lot of looting so we kept that to a minimum by getting the law enforcement involved real quick and getting everything guarded. It was bad enough that their houses were knocked down, but their whole lives were laying out in their yards and people were riding around and starting to take stuff so we got on top of that real early. We got the State of Tennessee to send some of the National Guard and local police departments, and they worked and kept people from looting.
“There were 231 homes flattened, 18 people died, we had another 1,000 homes that had a tremendous amount of damage to them, but we were able to get all of that cleaned up, get all the roads back open, all our infrastructure, all of our electricity, communications, phones, get all of our emergency communications and all of that back up and running, probably for the most part within 36 hours. Plus, all the while, we were searching and making sure that we were accounting for everybody. It was just a few months later that we had all the homes down, all the homes gone, most of the homes starting to be built back. No one suffered, they didn't stay homeless for very long. At one time, we had a hundred plus in our shelter, and it didn't take very long to get that weeded through and get everybody in a place. And you throw in a Presidential visit right in the middle of that. That was an undertaking. He commands a lot of attention and a lot of hoorah around him so that was four days into the event, and we've had a President here in Macon County back in the early days over in Red Boiling Springs at the sulphur springs, but, in modern times, that's the only time a President's ever been to Macon County.
“A lot of stuff goes on when a President comes to a community, and we were dealing with a tremendous amount of damage to our county and our infrastructure, and, then, to throw that right in the middle of it, it still went off pretty good. We didn't have any major incidents, no problems. It all went off real well.
“A lot of people don't realize what goes on behind the scenes with planning and mitigation, looking at what could happen. Fortunately, we got on board with the state several years ago and were trying, and we had everything in place, and it worked out wonderful.
Other counties have implemented some of the strategies that were used here in Macon County after the tornado.
“We've now got a statewide mutual aid system in emergency management where I was up, during the tornado, initially I was up for about three days straight without any sleep because I was the only one that actually knew a lot of details and numbers that we needed. Now, we've got a statewide deal, where I can have an Emergency Manager from another community come in. We've got teams assigned. During the flood, I sent a crew over to Clay County that helped them for a few hours. That was pursuant to the statewide deal. That's going to work out real good for us in the future. Me as Emergency Management Director, if I get so wore out I can't go, I can get an Emergency Management Director from another community to come and take my place. All the positions that we have here in Macon County can be filled by somebody that has been trained as well from another community, and the state coordinates that through emergency management so it works out real well.
While he is glad to know that they can count on help if he needs it, Scruggs wouldn't trade in the emergency service workers in Macon County.
“All of the emergency services in Macon County are unique and individual. Macon County is very fortunate to be such a small county to have the dedication from the individual emergency departments that they have.
“All the emergency services in Macon County really are top notch. I would put our small county against a much larger county in a time of need. They do a tremendous job."
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