County EMAs Are Making The Most of What They Have Available

MONROE COUNTY, Miss. (WCBI) – County Emergency Management workers have a tough job when disaster strikes, and state budget cuts don’t make it any easier..

Now, a Mississippi Department of Health program is giving them a hand.

School districts throughout our area are always de-commissioning school buses, but thanks to the AMBUS program by the state department of health these buses are finding a new purpose.

“Mass evacuations for hospitals and nursing homes,” explained Monroe County EMA Director, Bunky Goza.

The program gives county EMAs a larger form of transportation for patients, should a disaster, natural or man-made, come through the area.

Before that, large evacuations were time-consuming.

“You just depended on your local ambulance services and churches and so forth, do the best you could do with what you had available,”  said Goza.

For Goza, finding a bus wasn’t a problem.

“The first thing EMA Directors do is try to acquire a bus,” said Goza, “and I was fortunate to have a good relationship through our LEPC with our local schools, Monroe County School District. I approached them with the program…”

…and the school gave Goza one of their reserve buses, no cost.

The Mississippi Department of Health did the rest.

“Supportive framework inside of the bus, the cots, and the transportation such as the straps, the ramp, and the pillows,” added Goza.

Put on a fresh coat of paint with lights and lettering, and county EMAs have a new resource at their disposal.

“It’s all part of networking,” said Goza. “Emergency management, we all deal with planning with our local emergency planning committee, so this is all part of the networking process to better sever the citizens of Monroe County and our area.”

The program is not mandatory, but Lowndes, Clay, Calhoun, and Chickasaw counties, to name a few, have joined the AMBUS program.