The same goes for the director of the Calhoun County Emergency Management Agency, which oversees local responses to emergencies in our county, whether related to the chemical weapons stockpile at Anniston Army Depot, to severe weather or to some other possible disaster.
This is why it is a good sign indeed that the Calhoun County Commission
has hired Dan Long as the county's new EMA director. Long previously worked
11 years at the EMA in the 1990s and was operations manager for the Chemical
Stockpile Emergency Preparedness Program.
Long is familiar with local emergency issues, and has the practical knowledge
to deal with them.
"(Dan) has a wealth of experience in CSEPP and in emergency management generally," said commission Chairman Robert Downing. "He has a tremendous amount of training and experience with chemical weapons."
It's good that this position has finally been taken over by a full-time worker, especially now that the chemical weapons incinerator is beginning to ramp up and this week began its destruction of gelled M-55 rockets. It's reassuring to this community that the new person on the job is actually an old hand with on-the-job experience.