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EMA seeks program coordinator, incident-reporting software and GIS to speed disaster assistance
Summary
Emergency Management Director Phil Davis asked the budget committee for a new program coordinator to pursue grants and manage recovery reporting, and proposed adopting Orion and Salamander software to streamline FEMA public-assistance applications and volunteer/in-kind tracking.
Sagadahoc County Emergency Management Director Phil Davis asked the Budget Advisory Committee to fund a new program coordinator and to license two software platforms — Orion (incident and damage reporting) and Salamander (volunteer check-in and in-kind tracking) — to speed FEMA public-assistance processing and improve recovery accounting.
Davis said EMA supports local fire departments, coordinates damage assessments and manages grant work that, last winter, included dozens of incidents and thousands of push notifications from the countys mass-notification system. He described Orion as a mobile and web platform that captures GPS-tagged damage assessments, photos and standardized fields that FEMA requires for Public Assistance (PA) applications and said Salamander provides time-and-attendance, volunteer credential tracking and in-kind donation valuation that FEMA also counts toward cost-share matches.
Davis said a short example illustrated the potential: Georgetown completed a PA application that took three staff 46 hours to prepare and yielded about $35,000 in federal PA funding. With Orion and Salamander, he said, the county could capture required evidence in the field and produce PA-ready reports, reducing staff hours and improving match documentation. He said the software and a full-time coordinator would pay for themselves if the county captures more reimbursable projects.
Davis also requested funding for public-safety equipment, GIS mapping capacity and continued maintenance of speed trailer and message-board assets. He said EMA manages more than $250,000 in grants and that the proposed coordinator would broaden the countys ability to pursue federal and private grant resources.
Ending: Davis said disasters and related recovery work are unpredictable and that the proposed software and coordinator would turn episodic grant workloads into a more efficient, documentable process, improving the countys ability to secure reimbursements and to support displaced residents.
