Two-day state workshop prepares for ag emergencies

CASPER — Emergency response and planning for agricultural emergencies are part of a two-day training workshop in Casper for producers and government entities.

The “Wyoming Ag Responder Academy” is Friday-Saturday, Sept. 8-9, at the Central Wyoming Fairgrounds in Casper, said Scott Cotton, University of Wyoming Extension educator and a presenter during the course. Go to bit.ly/WYAgDisasterTraining for more information and to register by noon Thursday.

The sessions are sponsored by UW Extension, Colorado State University Extension and Montana State University Extension addressing specific needs of western states that have fewer resources, deal with greater distances and more community dependence on agriculture, said Cotton.

Agribusinesses, producers and emergency management entities will review risks, assess capabilities and then build teams to enhance response abilities, he said.

UW Extension educator Caleb Carter and Dr. Jeanne Rankin, DVM, of Montana State University are also presenting.

Emergency response time to agricultural emergencies can be less than 45 minutes if there is planning compared to days without any preparation, Cotton said.

“Whether it is blizzards, floods, wildfires or something else, western agriculture producers cannot afford not to have a system that can support them,” he said. “If the past has taught anything, it is that agriculture is too important to western communities to leave it unprepared for disasters.”

Participants will learn basic disaster response guidelines, animal handling techniques, use of emergency livestock equipment, radio protocols, livestock evacuation, livestock sheltering, and damage appraisal guidelines used by the USDA and Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Cotton said Tuesday he has 21 people signed up with another 13 calling Tuesday morning expressing interest.

“The project is designed to do a series of one-day seminars in each of the three states,” Cotton said. “And one responder academy like this in each of the three states.”

Cotton noted the meeting in Worland in early June was part of the one-day seminar.

The seminars are funded through the USDA and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture.

“We have a definite need for this. I’ve been working ag disaster response for 20-some years. The problem is that a lot of people back East design response protocol based on communities being really close together. That’s not how are landscape is out here. For a number of years I’ve been telling them we need to do some practical training for western area livestock and agriculture risk mitigation (W ALARM).

“The whole idea [behind the seminars] is to help them build teams that are capable of responding to agriculture-type of accidents or disaster affects. We’ve got a lot of training around the people safety and recovery … but not near enough around agriculture and livestock.

“All these fires and winter storms, you look at Winter Storm Adam in 2013 over on the east side between Wyoming, Nebraska and South Dakota we lost 45,000 head of livestock and we had a quarter of million lost in the snow for about three days. We need to figure out how to deal with stuff like that. This gives an opportunity for emergency managers to interact with ag interests to come up with a plan that makes sense on both sides of the fence.”