EMERGENCY MINDED

Dara Decker, primarily responsible for maintaining the county's overall emergency operations plan, consults with Union County Sheriff Steve Oliver. (Observer photos/LAURA MACKIE-HANCOCK).

By T.L. Petersen

Observer Staff Writer

Dara Decker really likes her job — especially since she gets to do it in her home community.

Decker is Union County's emergency services officer — a title that took on an entirely different meaning just weeks after she started the job — just before Sept. 11, 2001.

"I got back here (after finishing her master's degree), and a month later 9/11 occurred. The world changed," Decker says. "Nine-11 happened, and emergency services changed."

After graduating from La Grande High School, Decker completed an undergraduate degree in planning, returned to La Grande, and in 1996 starting working for the City of

La Grande doing water conservation work.

After that work ended in 1997, she accepted a position in the county planning department in 1998.

Then in 1999, she and her husband, William Knight, a planner with the Oregon Department of Transportation and another LHS grad, decided to return to the University of Oregon for their masters' degrees, taking a leave of absence from their work here.

For Decker, a master's degree in community and regional planning meant a focus more on rural planning than on urban planning.

Her course work also drew her interest to emergency services management — an interest that, part way through her master's program, led her to accept an offer from Union County to work as a half-time planner and a half-time emergency services officer.

In that position, Decker kept track of the county's emergency plans for natural disasters and coordinated plans for problems that could impact law enforcement, the hospital and interstate travel.

Then Sept. 11 happened, and a virtually unknown department and county plan suddenly came to the forefront of county, state and national attention.

While Decker is primarily responsible for maintaining the county's overall emergency operations plan — housed in a large binder she keeps within reach of her office chair — that job description is a broad umbrella over the actual work.

She keeps in touch with county officials and officials in smaller communities, maintains an emergency phone list for various types of trouble, talks to community groups and schools about emergency preparedness, provides information to state and federal agencies, puts together grant applications in the hopes of bringing in emergency supplies to Union County and, as she says, "a lot of coordination."

Like many people, Decker has vivid memories of watching television as the terrorist attacks unfolded on Sept. 11.

What she remembers most is watching the first of two World Trade Center towers collapse.

"It's real," she remembers thinking. "I've got to get to work."

A call was waiting at work from the state emergency services office, and while Union County did not activate its emergency operations center, Decker did go around that day and talk to all her contacts.

"It was real," she stresses, "and kind of scary."

Scary, yes, but it clarified for Decker why she loves her job in her home community.

"I was born and raised here. It's important that we be safe and healthy. It's hard to say if I'd be as excited if I was doing this elsewhere."

Since that day, Decker's job has transitioned into a full-time job that now includes making sure the county meets regular deadlines for information, training and reports involving the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Quarterly reports, she explained, "detail what I said I'd do, what I did, and the extras we did."

In the next year, for example, Decker will be coordinating with a contractor who will be adding a chapter to the emergency operations plan dealing with being prepared for domestic terrorism.

That will clarify how the county decides that there is a local emergency, how the county defines domestic terrorism, and how it seeks state help, or perhaps even national help such as the FBI, if brought in.

"There's just a lot to think about, a lot to do," Decker admits, keeping her normal engaging grin firmly in place.

"The hardest part is prioritizing my list of what has to be done. It's kind of a chore to be sure I'm dealing with the most important thing."

And, yes, Decker says, her job requires being organized at all times, making lists and being sure she follows through on projects.

And that's not all. For the various multi-agency meetings she is involved with, she has to get the notices out to the attendees, conduct the meetings, and write up the outcomes.

FEMA also requires there be an emergency drill every year in every county. Last year Decker coordinated an exercise with neighboring counties on how an outbreak of anthrax would be dealt with. The country may have been thinking about smallpox, Decker explained, but anthrax seemed somewhat less unlikely in Northeast Oregon.

"It's hard for me to decide what kind of incident" to practice, Decker said, as she tries to make the emergency fit in with state guidelines, be relevant to Union County, and be something that needs practicing locally.

Decker is pleased that everyone has been welcoming to her and the recommendations she has made.

"I think people feel this is an important thing," she says.

Emergency preparedness, she adds, isn't always about having the needed materials, but knowing where to get it.

She considers the possibility of flooding in the valley, or a problem along the interstate. Decker wouldn't probably be the first responder, but "I help them get what is needed to fix the problem.

Asked who is her back-up, Decker laughs. "It's a staff of me," she says.

If, though, she was out of town, there is a protocol for who takes over. The sheriff is the first person in line, then the county's public works department. And if the accident was big enough, Decker would be recalled from her travels.

All the planning, all the work that happens when there's not an emergency, gives Decker confidence.

She will do her best to keep her community safe — and she'll know how to get help if it is ever needed.