Come flood, fire or pandemic, Brown County’s safety and the support of its first responders has been ensured by the tireless work of its Emergency Management Alliance (EMA) director.

Since 2017, Susan Armstrong has filled that role, standing behind responders and local emergency agencies making sure they have what they need.

She’s now moving on to a new adventure in the private sector, having taken a role with Cummins’ emergency management team in Columbus, where she will work on emergency planning for the company.

The tasks will be the same sort of thing she does now, she said last week, focusing on planning for natural disasters, threatening behaviors an plans for evacuations.

A difference is the international role of Cummins, Armstrong said, shifting the focus from a community role among county residents.

Armstrong is currently in a masters program with the Indiana Department of Homeland Security (IDHS), which she said will open additional doors.

Armstrong has a bachelor’s in psychology from Purdue University, and is a Certified Emergency Manager.

When Armstrong began in Brown County six years ago, she had been the emergency management deputy director in Bartholomew County for three years.

Before that, she was a volunteer firefighter with the East Columbus Volunteer Fire Department.

Through her role as a first responder she was able to make a connection with the emergency management director and deputy director in Bartholomew County.

She said last week that she loved the volunteer fire department from the moment she started, and in the process learned more about how to support the mental health of first responders, which is what led to her first emergency management role.

In the role she was able to build up the services for first responders following emotional incidents.

“I’ve learned a lot about emergency management in the last six years,” Armstrong said last week.

“I’ve learned a lot about working with a county that has limited resources.”

When compared to other counties in Indiana, Brown County has less resources available when it comes to emergency agencies, she said.

“We don’t have 15 volunteer fire departments with paid staff, or a sheriff’s department available to step into an (emergency operations center),” she said.

“Working with the resources of what we have here in the county has taught me a lot, and it has made me a better emergency management director.”

‘A great asset’

According to IDHS Emergency Management Director Mary Moran, Emergency Management professionals focus full-time on helping first responders, local leaders and entire communities prepare for and respond to disasters of all kinds.

“They are the direct connection to emergency assistance from the State Emergency Operations Center and even federal officials, when needed, and contribute in a multitude of ways to the overall safety and resilience at the local level,” she said.

Out of Indiana’s 92 counties, 91 support the EMA position due to its significance in planning and preparing for dangerous and potentially tragic events.

The EMA director also serves as a single point of contact for FEMA, IDHS and everything that happens with those agencies funnels through the local EMA office.

One of the most important facets of the local EMA director’s job is to make sure that first responders have the resources they need to respond to in an emergency.

Supplies, equipment, manpower, volunteers for fire departments, law enforcement, EMS crews, Indiana Conservation Officers — whatever is needed falls under the purview of the EMA director.

“An emergency is not just a FEMA disaster,” Armstrong said.

“It could be, ‘Do (firefighters) have enough help to put out a housefire?’”

The EMA program is mandated through Indiana Title X, each county is required to have EMA program.

EMA works within ten districts in Indiana. Brown County is in District 8, along with Bartholomew, Jackson, Lawrence, Monroe, Orange and Washington counties.

Working within a district gives counties the ability to pull resources from what a particular county may lack, Armstrong said.

If there’s a large fire, for instance, mutual aid may come from any of the counties in the district.

The position is funded through a mix of state and county funding, is partially grant-reimbursed and is overseen by the Emergency Management Advisory Council (EMAC).

Chris Henderson is a paramedic with IU Health LifeLine, as well as the EMAC chair.

A small group of EMAC members will conduct interviews for the county’s new EMA director, Henderson said last week. Once they choose candidates, they will present their recommendation for hire to the Brown County Commissioners. Applications are being accepted until March 31.

“This has to be someone that knows how to put plans together, knows how to write grants, but also has to be able to man our command center if we had a disaster,” Henderson said last week.

He said that EMAC would like someone who already has their certification as an EMA director, but it is not a requirement. The EMAC may request they obtain the certification within a certain time frame, he said.

“This is not like the old days where you can go from a job in emergency services into that position. There’s a lot more to it now,” he said.

“It has to be someone that needs to be able to get the resources we need, work with county government, federal (government) and (experience to) write grants.”

The role is integral for a community, Henderson said.

“You don’t know when a disaster is going to hit. We’ve been hit (before),” he said.

“It doesn’t stop when we see the disaster, the recovery can be long if not longer. … When you talk about emergency management, it’s the planning, the resource management, then how to recover from a disaster.”

Henderson said that Armstrong is the most qualified EMA director the county has had, and was one of the first in the state to be able to adapt new measures for plans and implementation before anyone else did.

Susan Armstrong, director of Brown County Emergency Management, was the recipient of the CR Brown Award of Excellence at the annual Emergency Management Alliance of Indiana conference in October. 

Submitted photos

“She was a great asset,” he said.

“I hate to see her go … but I know she’s got my back in whatever we’re working on, what we started, I wish her the best and look forward to see how she develops in her own career.”

Response, recovery, resilience

The ability to see the bigger pictures of emergencies can sometimes be difficult for the community to see, Armstrong said.

Some may call her “The Weather Lady,” she said, since she posts travel updates to the Brown County Emergency Management Facebook page.

Yes, she said, but she’s the reason the travel status changes in the county, working with the Brown County Highway Department, Brown County Schools and other agencies to make safety decisions with county residents in mind.

The role also coordinates with other agencies like public health, the Cordry-Sweetwater Conservancy District and the Town of Nashville.

“The other piece is making sure the community is safe, that they have all the information they need to be safe,” she said.

“Changing that travel status, making sure we have a working tornado siren … education, classes, presentations. What you need to do to be prepared should something happen in the county? (It’s) a lot of planning. A lot of plans that go into keeping everybody safe and making sure we have all the resources.”

“Having a solid EMA program means that the county is more resilient, more able to respond if there’s a disaster. Having those plans in place, having those connections, gives me the opportunity to pull whatever I need to keep my community safe,” Armstrong said.

Flooding is a consistent issue in the county that Armstrong has seen continue to be one of the larger events that really affects the area.

There have also been a number of large brush fires, even within the last year.

Last year there were two that stick out to Armstrong: one on Green Valley Church Road that burned roughly 40 acres of land, and one in the Brown County State Park in November that burned an estimated 100 acres, according to Indiana Department of Natural Resources.

“Those fires made me feel proud of my guys,” Armstrong said about local first responders.

“They did such an amazing job in those two fires. … Watching that unfold and how everybody came together, worked together, saved the structures, contained the fires, made me pretty happy to be here.

“It was a horrible incident and I hated that we had to deal with it, but the teamwork and the way the fire ended up, it was a really good show of what these guys are able to do.”

A more significant event from Armstrong’s career as Brown County’s EMA director is the global COVID-19 pandemic.

When asked if she ever thought she’d be working through a pandemic, Armstrong said “absolutely not.”

It was March 13, 2020 when the county opened its emergency operations center (EOC), before the county even had a positive COVID case.

“Those first couple of months of the pandemic we were (practically) living at the office,” Armstrong said.

She said she and local public health officials didn’t want to go home and get their families sick, but they also needed to be there for the community.

From writing plans to putting plans in place, administering mass vaccinations clinics and more, Armstrong said that it was something that she didn’t think that they would have to do.

“But I’m glad we had things in place prior,” she said.

“That’s why planning is important. We had a team in place. We came out of it with a really good response and recovery to COVID in Brown County.”

Armstrong said that as she leaves the position, she’s thankful for every community connection she has made in Brown County.

“Every person I’ve met, every person I’ve helped along the way — whether it’s how to do an EMA plan for their dam, helping during COVID, or what they can do to help their neighbors — I love Brown County for the fact that it’s a very resilient county and everybody wants to help other people,” she said.

“I’ve enjoyed watching that grow as I’ve been here, and watching people help and get involved when something does happen.”