By Stephen Smoot
Pendleton Manor holds a sacred trust with the surrounding community, providing the best possible care while keeping residents safe and secure.
Facility officials, county emergency management officials, and law enforcement came together to engage in communication and ensure residents remain safe, even during times of danger.
Pendleton Manor’s Sharon Jamison RN, SDC, RMD, opened the meeting with an invocation, praying, “Dear God, I give myself to you.” Attendees enjoyed sandwiches, chips, dessert, and drinks, all provided by Subway.
Rick Gillespie and Bruce Minor from the Pendleton County Office of Emergency Management joined a group of more than 20 staff members, including R. J. Kropp, executive director. Jamison then went over the “ground rules,” which included “describe events as real, even if they seem improbable.”
The first scenario evoked feelings of familiarity with recent events. Staff first went over a scenario that read “there is a wildfire burning several miles away, but so far, you’ve not been concerned with any threat to you or to residents.”
Next comes the “emergency notification from the County’s Reverse 911 system. All residences and businesses receiving this call should be prepared to evacuate within three hours due to the threat of wildfire.”
The threat scenario reflects a recurring problem in Pendleton County over the centuries, from fires set during the clash of armies during the Civil War to the Franklin Fire of 1924, to the most recent outbreak, where several fires started at widely separated points in the span of an hour.
The staff was broken up into different tables. Each had a copy of the new emergency planning book recently produced by Jamison. She noted that the new edition had expanded quite a bit over the former guidebook.
Gillespie repeatedly praised the thoroughness of the detail-oriented work, saying, “This is all encompassing . . . it should really give the family members comfort.”
Topics for discussion during the discussion on evacuation centered on leadership, issues centered on transportation, and communications. Jamison assured all in attendance that “all ideas are welcome.”
About 45 minutes into the scenario, Jamison inserted a “wrinkle” by informing staff that “law enforcement has ordered an evacuation of this facility,” by necessity changing the tone and urgency of discussion ideas.
“Now you have two hours instead of three hours to get people out,” Jamison added.
Emergency management officials remained engaged. Minor noted that their office could give Pendleton Manor access to the ability of the office to make mass phone calls during serious events. Gillespie approved of the idea of using school buses for evacuation, saying that “the beauty of school buses is that they are on the county emergency radio system.
Eddie Caplinger of Pendleton Manor, who is also a Franklin Volunteer Fire Department member, conferred with James Alt, a nurse on staff, about ways to safely get residents “out of immediate danger.”
Others focused on resident needs from medicine to mental health, especially those traumatized by the abrupt change in routine.
Gillespie and Caplinger also discussed alternative forms of communication if phone lines, internet, and cellular towers go down, including an already in place HAM radio communications system and Starlink, as well as local broadcast media such as WELD and WHSV.
After covering the natural disaster scenario, J. L. Dempsey, Pendleton County Sheriff’s Deputy and a long time veteran of law enforcement in Virginia, led scenario discussions involving how to respond to an active shooter event.
For reasons that should be obvious, it would not be productive to share discussions and planning for the active shooter scenario.
