The coming of spring has a lot of visuals that come with it—a new baseball season, basketball and hockey playoffs, a new bunch of tulips and daffodils.  For those of use in the Midwest, it also means storm season.

The spring storm season has been known for its wonder and powerful thunder and lightning storms.  I love hearing the thunder and trying to count seconds from lightening to sound to see how far away the lightening really is.  The down side of these storms is that sometimes they produce what a friend of mine calls a “tor-nasty.”

This afternoon, I had the Kansas Department of Emergency Management present a table top training session.  It got us looking at our plan and asking questions about how well we are (not) prepared for weather like this.  Our discussion today highlighted several issues we have to address soon so that we can cope during the first couple of days before outside help arrives.

One thing that came out in our discussion was that most of our city employees are also firemen.  When the fire bell rings they miraculously change from employees to volunteer firemen and are gone from a work site.  In a “tor-nasty” the question arises as to which department they respond to.  This came in our discussion because 3 of the 4 electric linemen are on the fire department and one is the Asst. Chief.

There is the small town dilemma; resources for one type of response are also resources for another.  Every community has to wrestle with answers to questions like this one.  So, the point of the posting today is to remind you that bad weather creates bad circumstances.  We need to have the conversations with staff about how they respond. 

It should go without saying (but I am going to anyway) that you need to reread your emergency plan.  If your community is like ours, it needs some updating.  You don’t want to be caught needing some resource to find out the names on your list are no longer valid.  We had elections and the updates have not been made yet.

I am not wishing ill to happen to any community but the storms seem to hit our small communities frequently.  As professional managers, we should be aware of the plans and the resources we will need in situations like these.  It is an opportunity to exercise great leadership.  Those of us in Kansas watched Steve Hewitt in Greensburg rise to the occasion.  Steve had been a city manager all of seven months when he was called to address tornado recovery for Greensburg.  He was the voice of “we can do this” that Greensburg needed at the time.

This is just a gentle reminder to check up on that part of your professional game plan for your city.

Last bit of advice—always ask for help!  Always!