The vision of Douglas County Emergency Management is that Douglas County, Kansas will be a community that is disaster aware and disaster prepared.
Welcome to the Douglas County, Kansas Emergency Management Annual Report page. Here you will find links to current and past Annual Reports.
Letter from the Directors: 2022 Annual Report
Agency Partners and Stakeholders,
We are pleased to share with you a year-end summary of the accomplishments and activities of Douglas County Emergency Management.
2022 began with the demobilization of the COVID-19 Unified Command and conversations about a “new normal.” Staff quickly identified and embraced necessary change while navigating both in-person and hybrid events, meetings, training and outreach.
While there were no major disasters during the year, staff and volunteers did collaborate with partners for planned large scale events such as the NCAA men’s college basketball celebrations following the Elite Eight, Final Four, and National Championship games which brought tens of thousands of people to downtown Lawrence and required significant collaboration, planning and resources to be successful.
We applaud staff and partners for participating in a new process in 2022 of reviewing Emergency Support Functions with monthly tabletop exercises. These exercises not only provided valuable feedback for the Local Emergency Operations Plan, but also prepared participates for a full-scale hazardous material exercise conducted in September.
We incorporated a new narrative this year on how we describe Emergency Management’s mission. We now divide Emergency Management into four quadrants: Support Systems, Stakeholder Readiness, Community Resilience and Operations. All of the work we do in the first three quadrants is in preparation for response and recovery during Operations.
While we cannot eliminate all hazards, we will continue to work on ways to improve our ability to respond to, recover from, and mitigate against disasters that can potentially affect the residents of Douglas County.
As you view the highlights of our department throughout this report, we hope you will recognize the positive impact that the Emergency Management has on our community. We continually strive to fulfill our vision – “Ensuring Douglas County cities and residents are disaster aware and disaster prepared.”
Robert Bieniecki, KCEM, CPM - Director
Jillian Rodrigue, KCEM, CPM - Deputy Director
Please click here to view the 2022 Emergency Management Annual Report
Previous Annual Reports
