Effective emergency management is about more than drafting planning documents, filling out grant proposals and maintaining equipment. Planning and obtaining funding is crucial, but one major component to success during an emergency is relationships, according to Apache County’s Emergency Management Director Brannon Eagar. Eagar and his one full-time emergency management staffer, Haley Nicoll, are working in limbo, awaiting possible action by the board of supervisors who are considering a proposal by District II supervisor Alton Joe Shepherd that would remove emergency management from the sheriff’s department and create a stand-alone department.
As a stand-alone department, emergency management would be closely controlled by the supervisors with day-to-day oversight by the county manager.
At a work session on January 15, over 30 people, most of them area firefighters and local government officials, over and over, stressed the importance of relationships and how effective Eagar has been in nurturing them.