A broad cross-section of community members in Des Moines County will be attending a 4 day Integrated Emergency Management Course (IEMC) at the FEMA training facility in Maryland. The four-day course offers an exercise-based training activity that places people under realistic crisis situations within a structured learning environment. Des Moines County Emergency Management Coordinator and Homeland Security Representative Gina Hardin says that the training session will take Des Moines County to the next level in disaster preparedness in case a disaster should strike. Hardin adds that FEMA came to Des Moine County earlier this year to size up the area to create a community-specific disaster plan. “they have really customized this scenario to us and to our community and to our area, so it’s not like we’re doing a fictiscious city. It’s us, our radio frequencies our equipment,” says Hardin. While here, FEMA also took pictures, looked a the geography and the county’s resources. Those 77 individuals that are attending will include city officials like the mayor, fire chief, hospital personal, volunteers, and media. Hardin says only two other counties in the state of Iowa have participated in such extensive disaster preparedness training and that the county began the application process well over a year ago for a nation-wide competative grant to make this possible.