County rings in with Homeland Security spending

Money went into improving equipment, communication

GRANT COUNTY — Money from the Department of Homeland Security has enabled emergency management services in the area to improve their equipment and response capabilities.

A Washington state county-by-county listing of fiscal 2003 federal Homeland Security spending on grants, contracts and wages was recently released through the Associated Press.

Grant County received $855,503, with per capita spending of $10.87. Adams County received $53,219, with per capita spending of $3.21.

A recent Associated Press article said that the state of Washington ranked eighth among the 50 states in federal Department of Homeland Security expenditures in fiscal 2003.

Sam Lorenz, director of emergency management for Grant County, said that part of the grant supplied equipment to maintain and enhance emergency response.

The second part of the grant was used to identify the number of emergency management services in Homeland Security Region 7, which covers Grant, Douglas, Chelan, Okanogan and Kittitas counties.

There was only one full-time emergency management program within the five counties, and that was Grant County, Lorenz said.

"The state asked us to take the lead on the second part of the 2003 funding to enhance response and emergency management," he said. "From that point on, (the county) became the grant manager for Region 7."

The first undertaking was to identify one person in emergency management working with all services to coordinate homeland security efforts, Lorenz said.

He said that the county is now working on a contract agreement for 2004 funding, noting that Homeland Security grants the financial award to the state, which in turn creates contracts with each region to provide the funding to local levels.

For 2004, Grant County has identified some of the things that 2003's funding would not allow, and applied some of the dollars, Lorenz said. While the 2003 grant allowed for the purchase of software that would enhance emergency operation centers by allowing them to monitor each other via the Internet, the grant did not allow for the program to be installed.

Lorenz said that the county is waiting for another grant to install the equipment, and estimated that the software would be installed in each of the counties, bringing computers into inter-operable procedures that would have relied on radios and telephones otherwise.

"Grant County has made a big effort to make sure that as much of this money can be spread through all three disciplines of fire, emergency medical services and law enforcement," he said. "We are currently working with interested participants in formulating a funding mechanism for future equipment."

Lorenz said that the first grant to the county in 2002 came via the state and was based on an assessment conducted with emergency response agencies within the county.

The county received inventory or equipment as decided by the state, and issued it to the various agencies that would accept it.

"Most of it was for hazardous material response, and some of the equipment was duplicative of what people had, or they didn't like it, so it was retained for (the) decon (decontamination) system," Lorenz said.

An Adams County representative could not be reached for comment at press time.