A Message from our Emergency Management Director, Fire Chief Denis McCarthy, about what it means to activate an Emergency Operation Center: 

The Town Emergency Management is responsible for coordinating the various municipal, non-governmental, volunteer and private sector resources to address the pandemic.

Our organization is battle tested having worked collaboratively in response to natural disasters, threats of violence, planned events as well as participation in disaster exercises with local, state and federal partners.

The pace of widespread impacts and the community response has accelerated in the past two weeks. Our Emergency Management Team began to focus on COVID19 in late January. The first cases were reported in Wuhan China in late December 2019. As is our practice, we identified threats and began our deliberate and measured response as early as possible to make appropriate, reasoned and well planned decisions.  We continue to be flexible and adjust our response priorities as circumstances dictate.

At the direction of First Selectwoman Brenda Kupchick we have activated our Emergency Operations Center. This step is a natural extension of the aggressive planning and response activities that have been well underway for weeks.

The Emergency Operations Center will have five major activities each focused on the community priorities which include but are not limited to:
 
Incident Objectives

• Provide care and support to those in need
• Containment of the virus to Non Pharmaceutical Interventions
• Provide timely information
• Maintain essential public services included emergency response

To meet these objectives the Emergency Management system has activated the following sections:
 
Command: this is the decision making body for the Town led by the First Selectwoman and includes all major Town department heads.

Planning: the planning section is responsible to develop strategies and tactics from the priorities developed by Command

Operations: is responsible for response coordination for all departments that have responsibilities for emergency as well as support services.

Finance: will track all municipal expenses to insure proper accounting and position the community for Federal Disaster assistance should it become available.

Public Information: to develop daily updates for widespread distribution to keep the community informed.

Liaison: provides two way communication between all community, state and federal partners as well as impacted sectors of the community.
                                                                                    
Lastly and most importantly our system relies on an actively engaged and informed community.  Observance of official directions and warnings is key to our community response and ultimate recovery from this pandemic. This is a civic responsibility and while we recognize the hardships our long term success will be measured by our ability to minimize the spread of disease. Town of Fairfield residents, employees and businesses are the most import part of our incident response plans.