ELKHART COUNTY, Ind. -- Elkhart County declared a local emergency on Monday. Indiana Governor Mike Braun declared a state-level emergency last week, and Indiana is included in the federal disaster declaration due to winter weather impacting several states.
According to the Indiana Department of Homeland Security, on the federal level, the emergency declaration for Indiana allows FEMA to help based on mission assignments. As an example, it could provide generators in the event of mass power outages in the state.
On a state level, the IDHS coordinates the state’s response efforts during the storm and works with both county emergency management agencies and FEMA, as the state emergency operations center is activated.
Jenn Tobey is the Elkhart County Emergency Management Executive Director.
In this case, she says the state declared first, then the federal government went second, then Elkhart County declared. Tobey says it can happen in any order, but normally, the county declares because it has exhausted all of its resources. Then, when enough counties exhaust resources, the state declares, and they petition the president.
According to Tobey, it all has to do with population and the money spent on that specific emergency.
“By declaring that emergency, we're letting our department heads, we're letting our town managers, we're letting our mayors [know]. Everybody's on the same playing field now so that we know, hey, let's start collecting those costs that we've been practicing for. Because we declare it during a tornado, we've declared for flooding. This just puts us at a different kind of a level of emergency to say, hey, let's start figuring out what our costs are. Then see if we qualify for anything from the state or from FEMA, or both,” said Tobey.
Tobey says they have been on calls with the Department of Homeland Security every day since last week, being updated on what’s going on within the state.
“So right now, our state emergency operations center is open, and it has its emergency support functions filled, and that's why we're calling at 10 o'clock every day to talk, so that we can report what we have. Right now. We have enough plows, we have enough manpower. We're just spending a lot of dollars early in the year that we planned on spending throughout the year, so that's what we're tracking,” said Tobey.
Here’s what this emergency declaration does for Elkhart County.
"What we were told is that to recoup any type of cost, like overtime, any damage where emergency work was done, or FEMA-coded resources that were used during the event, this weather event, we would have to do our own declaration. So that's what happened this morning at the commissioners meeting, is that Elkhart County has declared a state of emergency, but the focus being more on how we could possibly recoup some costs," said Tobey.
Those costs would be for things like overtime for road crews or first responders working extra hours. Tobey says the costs could be recouped through the state's disaster relief fund, or if the state qualifies for FEMA funds.
This declaration does not* change the current travel status, which is at a travel watch, which shows up in orange on the travel advisory map.
“People will ask, well, if you look at the travel map, why is the travel map still show an orange for Elkhart County? Well, that's because those are really two different programs. We have concerns about the roads, but we have a lot of confidence in our street departments and our highway department of keeping them cleared off. We understand that the roads are icy and that sand and salt are not going to do a lot because of our cold temperature, and then again, that extreme cold temperature, but it's not to the degree of this not being normal Indiana winter weather,” said Tobey. “So we want to put that caution out there and kind of encourage people to have a plan and not go out unless they need to, but have that ability to go out if they have to.”