In light of recent world events, The Catoosa County News posed questions March 20 to Catoosa Emergency Management director Clyde Ingle concerning just how safe Catoosa County really is and what steps residents can take to be prepared in the event of a local disaster.

How safe is Catoosa County?

“We feel we are very safe. To start with, you have to have some type of target of opportunity to be initially considered for a terrorist attack other than anything that is totally random. Even though we have some nuclear plants around us like Sequoyah and dams like Watt’s Bar, Chickamauga and Nickajack, they are remote enough from us that we would not have anything direct to worry about. Catoosa emergency services is prepared as much as we could be for anything that comes up. We do not feel like we have a big problem.

You have made it clear that chances of a nuclear or biological attack in Catoosa County are slim, and Chattanooga will probably not be targeted. If some kind of nuclear or biological incident occurred in Atlanta or as far away as Washington, D.C. and tens of thousands were injured or killed, how would Catoosa County be affected?

“It depends on what the evacuation plan was at the spot of the attack. It would no doubt be handled by GEMA (Georgia Emergency Management Agency) and FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) to determine which way they are going to evacuate and how. Currently every county in the state has a resource list for shelters. Whether we would immediately start to open those shelters in association with the Red Cross or whether we would depend on motels would have to be a determination we would make according to the situation. We are lucky in the fact that the wind is predominantly out of the Southwest at this location. So everything (fallout, airborne biological weapons) is theoretically going to move away from us unless we have an inverted weather system. Once again it would be our main responsibility to provide for people who were evacuating from those areas.”

Where are Catoosa County’s fallout shelters?

“We do not have fallout shelters anymore, but we do have shelters. In the past we had about 30 or 40 listed. We have paired our list down to 10 shelters based on having to shelter 30 people on up to 2-3,000. For us to open a shelter in Catoosa County the word has to come out of the Department of Family and Children Services through the Governor’s office. They work closely with the American Red Cross who is better prepared to set up shelters. If we had to have a massive evacuation, we have anticipated using the rifle range, which has the capacity to house several hundred. Then there are local churches like First Baptist Church of Ringgold, First Baptist Church of Fort Oglethorpe, Battlefield Church of the Nazarene, Ringgold United Methodist Church, and voting precincts in Fort Oglethorpe, Graysville, and Woodstation. We are going to soon start training some shelter volunteers."

How would residents be made aware of a disaster situation and receive instructions on how to keep their families safe?

“The key thing is keep a radio. I cannot speculate what type of attack it could be and what services it would render unavailable to us. Unless it devastates us we are going to be out trying to take care of the people. If worse comes to worse we can put 50 or 60 emergency services vehicles on the street with loud speakers telling people what to do. This is one of the reasons in my SPLOST (special-purpose local-option sales tax) request I am pushing for warning sirens. They have voice communication capabilities so if something happened we could quickly warn the whole county where or if residents need to seek shelter.”

How many sirens are we talking about?

It is close to 32, but before we actually put them in they will do a geographical study to locate them. We plan to do whatever is necessary to cover the whole area.”

For local families worried about how to protect themselves in uncertain times with potential terrorist attacks what should they do?

“For local people we recommend they have the family disaster supply kit suggested by the Red Cross. These are kits you build yourself. The Red Cross provides the guidelines. For more information about creating a family disaster kit contact the Northwest Georgia Services of the American Red Cross at (423) 265-3455 or visit www.redcross.org.