By NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Though some counties in Kansas, like Shawnee County, have made new emergency disaster declarations related to the latest surge of COVID-19 cases, at least right now, Reno County is not on that path.
"Right now, we're doing okay," said Reno County Emergency Management Director Adam Weishaar. "If the situation changes and we're having to request stuff daily through the state like we were at one point in time, we'd definitely go back to the Board of County Commissioners and request a disaster declaration for Reno County."
It really is about whether or not those resources are being relied upon on a daily basis, rather than being requested intermittently.
"Right now, the biggest resource going out is our personal protective equipment," Weishaar said. "Since there's no active disaster declaration in the state, they've allowed some of the counties to request supplies through them without a disaster declaration in place, but, I think best practices would say that we should go ahead and have one if we're going to make those daily requests like we were last year during COVID."
Part of the reason that a declaration isn't necessary yet is that everyone has learned a lot over the last eighteen months.
"The biggest difference is, we're not living in the unknown anymore," Weishaar said. "We went through this a whole year last year, we have some good lessons learned from that and we have personal protective equipment readily available. When this all kicked off last year, we were scrounging for absolutely any masks, any gowns, any face shields, any gloves we could get. It was really challenging. We were requesting stuff daily from the state. They were sending stuff just about daily. We were pushing it out as soon as we got it. With the CARES money, we were able to procure a few hundred thousand dollars worth of personal protective equipment. That's what we've been using to supply our medical care facilities, hospitals, businesses, etc."
The local disaster declaration ended at the end of June.