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Teton County commissioners are looking to improve its emergency response by looking to Kerr County, Texas, where a July flood killed 119 people, 27 of them children.
While media interrogation focused on the emergency alert system and warning system, Teton County Emergency Management Coordinator Rich Ochs told commissioners on Sept. 7, that’s not the full picture.
“I think it’s seen as a panacea by many of the people in Kerr County that, well, if they only had sirens, this wouldn’t have happened. And I don’t believe that’s true,” Ochs said.
Teton County does need more outdoor sirens, Ochs said. Seven sirens cover the county, but don’t reach the neighborhoods of East Jackson, central Jackson or over Teton Pass in Alta and near Grand Targhee Resort. Each siren costs about $80,000, Ochs said, and similar to Kerr County, Teton has been denied federal funding for the infrastructure before. The county also needs another employee to act as backup coordinator, Ochs said. The emergency coordinator in Texas was sick and asleep during the disaster.
More pressing, Ochs said, are the policy questions. State statute is unclear on who has authority for protective actions such as evacuations, shelter in place or avoiding an area.
“Essentially, the governor really is the only one that has the authority to really evacuate anybody in Wyoming,” Ochs said. “The question’s going to come up, why didn’t you evacuate [people]? And we need to be prepared to answer that.”
Ochs said attorneys from the state and county are working to see if the law should change and make suggestions for how it might.
He added that Teton County is doing a lot right when it comes to emergency alerts, such as its multiple layers of notification during a disaster like fire or flood.
