Daviess County Fiscal Court will be applying for a grant that allows the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to conduct a pilot program that addresses potential infrastructure collapses that could occur in the event of natural, technological or man-made disasters.
This Fiscal Court application is entitled the Kentucky Division of Emergency Management hazardous mitigation plan add-on for infrastructure resiliency.
“The commissioner’s office is sponsoring an advocation to FEMA on behalf of GRADD’s (Green River Area Development District) seven counties to participate in this pilot program,” said Daviess County Judge-Executive Al Mattingly. “The objective is to grow an understanding of critical infrastructure and the increasing link between cyber and physical infrastructure.”
This pilot program will allow FEMA to create a strategic model at the local level. Once that model is completed, it can be integrated into hazard mitigation.
If Daviess County were ever under a threat of being taken off the grid or underwent a disaster that affected its infrastructure, this FEMA pilot program would provide an informative perspective on how the area might subsequently suffer. A model based on local infrastructure, as would be conducted by FEMA, would provide a layout that could be used in Daviess County during a potential real-time emergency.
Fiscal Court will act as a facilitator for this pilot program, Mattingly said, and a $60,500 grant would be issued through GRADD to put the program into action.
GRADD Hazard Mitigation Plan Director Blake Edge said GRADD Executive Director Jiten Shah was approached by an official from FEMA about the program a few months ago.
“FEMA is really focused on lifelines now — how one infrastructure affects the other,” Edge said. “After Hurricane Maria, there was a nursing home where they had generators to run their oxygen supply, but their network was down and the oxygen supply required the network to work, and the network was down.”
Since that incident, Edge said FEMA has taken a strong focus in addressing the issue of infrastructure failures across the country.
The pilot program would take around 888 days to complete.
“The power grid affects the water supply, the natural gas supply and the network,” Edge said. “What we’re doing with this pilot project is, really just trying to establish a program that would grow out to the federal level.”
