By NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Reno County Emergency Management Director Adam Weishaar still feels okay about the amount of personal protective equipment available to those who need it, even with a large increase in cases in recent weeks.
"We're currently doing okay," Weishaar said. "We're still waiting on shipments of gowns and gloves that should be in sometime around mid to late December. Once those get in, I'll be a lot more comfortable. Since we still have an active disaster declaration in place from our Board of County Commissioners, we can still request resources from the state. Just recently, in the past two weeks, I've been putting in resource requests from them and they've fulfilled those."
Weishaar highlighted the support that the commission has given his office throughout the pandemic.
"We expected it to be here for a month or so and be gone, but here it is the end of November, start of December and we're still here and our elected officials continue to support us in that and that's huge," Weishaar said. "I know some counties, some emergency managers, some health care professionals aren't quite so lucky to have the support of their elected officials like we do here."
In counties across the state, as high as 20% of the health care professionals that work for counties are leaving, but Weishaar feels blessed that everyone seems to be working together here.
"Really, it's not stuff that we've done, it's stuff that the community has done," Weishaar said. "The Chamber of Commerce helped put together this steering committee, where it has everyone from businesses, to nonprofits to church gatherings and we did that really early and that's paid dividends for us."
Weishaar noted that it has been around 270 days since the beginning of the pandemic response in Reno County.