Officials look back at 411 days of declared emergency

Missouri and the country have been under a declared state of emergency for 411 days, those attending the weekly Butler County EMA COVID-19 briefing Wednesday were reminded.

Hank Voelker, Regional E coordinator for the State Emergency Management Agency, and Caroline Robison Gibbs of Bloomfield, a University of Missouri student, joined the briefing.

“Hopefully, we will begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel winding down vaccinations soon,” Voelker said. “We’ve had an increase in requests for public service or public assistance through FEMA. We’ve now had over 800 requests from communities in Missouri for assistance.”

FEMA already has begun working on those requests and has started 204 projects in the state for a total of $190 million, Voelker said.

“That’s just the beginning,” he said. “So those projects are continued in the recovery division.”

Voelker said, the SEMA response division will “stay very busy with our disaster medical assistance team. They’ve performed 294 medical missions as of two days ago, and they’ve also done 262 logistical missions. They’re responsible for transporting a lot of vaccines across the state from region to region and medical facilities. In the response division, we have a massive warehouse where we take in supplies for the Department Of Health And Senior Services. They’ve distributed over 8,000 cases of alcohol pads, 32,000 sharps containers, 3.8 million syringes, and 120,000 hypodermic needles for vaccinations.”

“We have a very busy crew, and our warehouse in Jefferson City is distributing all those medical supplies across the state,” he said.

The state emergency operations center was activated on March 17, 2020, and has processed well over 2,000 resource requests, Voelker said.

Voelker and Butler County Health Department Director Emily Goodin have attended all the vaccination sites in the Region E counties of Bollinger, Butler, Cape Girardeau, Dunklin, Iron, Madison, Mississippi, New Madrid, Pemiscot, Ripley, Scott, Stoddard and Wayne.

Butler County Emergency Management Agency Director Robbie Myers introduced Gibbs, a health sciences student at the university.

“This semester, she has been an intern with me and has prepared a project looking at some of the data on COVID-19 in Butler County and the state of Missouri,” Myers said.

Gibbs said her project has been putting “together a presentation highlighting some of the milestones we have seen over the past 411 days that we have been in national and statewide emergency situations.”

Gibbs’ project is entitled Pandemic 411.

Myers said, “she did a great job of compiling the data. It’s gonna be very helpful for us for after-action reports. She did a great job of capturing the different milestones. I greatly appreciate Caroline. I appreciate working with the University of Missouri and them providing us an intern to help gather this information.”

Goodin pointed out, “we’re still doing our COVID testing at the health department every Wednesday by appointment. We did a vaccination clinic Friday at the Elks club with the National Guard. We’ll be back in about four weeks for the booster shots.”

Goodin said the health department also is doing vaccinations.

“So if anybody is interested in a vaccine, we have the Moderna vaccine,” Goodin said. “So anyone 18 years of age and older is eligible. Just call the health department or get on vaccine navigator, and we can go ahead and get them an appointment and get them vaccinated.”

Boys and Girls Club Director Chris Rushin talked about summer school and after-school plans.

“Those plans are on our website, if anybody would want to take a look at those,” Rushin said. “We have started taking applications for the summer program. If anybody needs help or assistance, please contact our office. You can go to our website bgcpb.org.”