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Southern Progressives
Moving to the left one post at a time
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State News:
Local News:
The United Way of McMinn & Meigs Counties will conduct its
annual Agency Workshop on Thursday, January 26th at 10 a.m. at the
McMinn County Higher Education Building located at 2345 DENSO
Drive, Athens. Any 501(c)3 non-profit agency interested in applying
for funding from the 2023 Campaign and becoming a United Way
Partner Agency must attend. The 2023-24 Application for Funding
will be available at this time. For more information about the fund
allocation process and to RSVP to the meeting, please contact Paige
Zabo by calling 423-745-9606 or via email at:
McMinn County Mayor John Gentry is encouraging the citizens of the county to sign up for the emergency alert messages.
Following the recent severe weather patterns, Gentry noted that families should create emergency shelter plans.
“At the end of the day everyone has to be responsible for their own safety,” Gentry said. “We do have risk. The south in general now has increased tornadic activity which is why we did the weather systems for our citizens so they will at least know when to take cover.”
The McMinn County Emergency Management Agency (EMA) set up a system to notify citizens electronically a few years ago about potential severe weather and Gentry said that’s a good system to consider.
“You can join it by texting ‘Join McMinn’ to 66893,” he noted. “On the website level of things you can set the levels of sensitivity, such as thunderstorm warning and a bunch of other options. It’s been a really good system that is tied into the National Weather Service and we encourage everyone to do so.”
He noted that local residents can even select how they are notified through the alerts with options such as text or phone call.
“We try to let people know not to be worried about being notified all the time because you get to select your own level of preparedness with the alerts,” Gentry expressed. “We also recommend people buy the weather radios because they also help keep you notified of severe weather. We always encourage families to have their own plans for severe weather, such as tornadoes, and know where to go and meet up.”
Gentry briefly spoke about community storm shelters and noted that it would not be a feasible option to pursue.
“You can’t shelter 50,000 people and where do you select those you can,” he questioned. “There is a reason there aren’t storm shelters everywhere. You get into staffing issues, proper timing to open the shelter and where do you place it? You don’t know where the tornado will strike and you could end up putting 150 or more people directly in the path of the tornado.”
Reflecting back to the tornado that hit Athens in 2016, Gentry shared what he had encountered from the aftermath.
“I literally witnessed a concrete floor ripped out and flipped during the tornado in 2016,” he recalled. “We just can’t do county-wide shelters. They just don’t exist. There have been some counties that may have placed one by a fire station, but it wouldn’t even hold even a half of a percent of the people, so how do you decide who can use the shelter? it just doesn’t work that way.”
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