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Emergency Management Agency

EMA's primary responsibility is to coordinate disaster relief in the McLean County area. Originally known as Civil Defense the functions related to enemy attack. In 1956, the Illinois Civil Defense Act was amended to include defense against both hostile enemy action and man-made disasters.

SCOPE OF SERVICES

McLean County EMA has a broad range of responsibilities beyond disaster response, including and maintaining the county's disaster plan, the county's hazardous materials plan, coordinating the Search and Rescue Teams, maintaining vehicles, generator units, portable light systems, and coordinating the county's weather spotting network.

COMMUNICATIONS

In the Radio/ Communications Room, we are able to communicate directly with all police, fire, and highway departments, trauma centers, rescue units, Red Cross, National Weather Service-Lincoln, utility companies, universities, local EMA, County EMA, and the State of Illinois EMA units along with Amateur Radio units.

MOBILE COMMUNICATIONS

McLean County EMA maintains a communications van for on-site incident command. Duplicating the Operations Center's Radio Room.

The van is equip with the following radio communication systems:

  • Kenwood TK-630H Commercial Low Band
  • Kenwood TK-730H Commercial VHF
  • Kenwood TK -830H Commercial UHF
  • GE Commercial L1HF
  • ICOM 2m/70cm Amateur
  • Kenwood TM-V7A 2m/70cm Amateur
  • Viking CM 800 MHz
  • Scanner
  • NOAA WX Radio
  • Cellular Phone
  • GPS -Global Positioning System
  • Computerized Topographical Mapping and printing

WEATHER SPOTTING

McLean County EMA has a unique weather spotting network of over 1,200 volunteers that have been trained to be dispatched for relaying severe weather information to our Emergency Operations Center (EOC).

ZONE CENTERS

The county has been divided into six zones with a town designated as the Zone Center in each area. The Zone Centers are responsible for the villages and towns by contacting them and advising them of emergency situations, whether it be a weather emergency, an evacuation or a hazardous chemical incident.
Each Zone Center has radio contact back to the EOC via Ultra High frequency radios.
he Zones are number 1-7, skipping the number six to avoid a possible confusion with District 6, of the Illinois State Police.

ADDITIONAL SERVICES

We do inspections of schools, businesses and churches for the best possible tornado shelter areas, and talks are given to various groups in McLean County on emergency preparedness responsibilities.

Our film library and video library which is available at no charge for viewing by groups these are of tornado, winter storm, disaster response, and concerning subject matter of interest for the entire population.

OTHER LINKS

Herein you will find general links, reference links, and other interesting weather-disaster related links.

IEMA - Illinois Emergency Management Agency
FEMA - Federal Emergency Management Agency
Weather Channel - Weather.com / NOAA / intellicast.com