County Honors Work of Emergency Management
Greg Wilson/Anderson Observer
Josh Hawkins does not sound like a man with a nine-to-five job, which is fortunate, because emergency management in Anderson County does not appear to permit one. The work is a little like standing in the wings of history and stormy weather at once, preparing for hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, winter storms, cyberattacks, and the less photogenic sort of crisis that arrives at 4 a.m. and requires everybody else to wake up.
Hawkins, the county’s Emergency Management director, says the department is less a single office than a relay team. It handles preparedness, response, mitigation, and the long afterlife of disaster — the road repairs, bridge replacements, reimbursement battles with federal agencies, and the tedious but essential business of making a county whole after something has broken it.
The department’s responsibilities are no longer confined to the weather. The county is a host community for Duke Energy’s nuclear facility, which means radiological monitoring, shelter planning, and annual exercises with the federal government to test whether the county can absorb evacuees if the unthinkable happens. It is the kind of duty that rarely enters ordinary conversation until the moment it becomes impossible to ignore.
Hawkins also spoke about the daily, less dramatic emergencies that make the system matter before catastrophe does. His team deals with HAZMAT calls, has drone pilots and dive-rescue capacity, performs swift-water rescue, and works alongside the sheriff’s office when technical support is needed. One boat, Marine Four, serves as a floating argument for coordination, able to handle firefighting, law enforcement, EMS, rescue, and hazardous materials all from the same platform.
The deeper calling of the department, though, is preventative. Hawkins pointed to Smart911, the system that allows residents to enter information about disabilities, oxygen use, children, pets, or mobility limitations so that, when they call 911, dispatchers can see that information on screen and respond accordingly. In effect, it is a quiet form of preparation for the unpredictable, a way of making emergency response less abstract for the people most likely to need it.
For Hawkins, the work is personal as well as professional. After decades in public service, has been in emergency management for eight years, and before that in the fire service (he remains a volunteer firefighter).
When he and his staff were recognized for their work by county council on Tuesday, he said the team is in the business of service rather than spectacle, though council’s decision to recognize them clearly meant something. When a county knows to call you at 4 a.m., he seemed to imply, that is as close to a civic compliment as one gets.
