The emergency management plan for Rush County remains incomplete after almost two years of inaction on the part of the EM director.

Letters to the Rush County commissioners regarding this matter are ignored outright -- apparently in an attempt to make the matter go away.

In the meantime, citizens are put at unnecessary risk because critical information concerning what to do in an emergency is unavailable online.

The only (incomplete) copy of the Rush County EM plan sits at the county transportation office -- where it does nobody any good.

For example, an impromptu survey of a dozen people at a local restaurant in Rush County revealed only one person in 10 knew where the emergency shelter was located for Rush County, which is the Rush County Memorial Hospital in La Crosse.

I am firmly convinced that unless and until this situation is remedied the citizenry of Rush County are at risk.

Further exacerbating this problem is the fact that the Kansas Emergency Management Department also ignores requests to find out what's going on here. I suspect that this situation is indicative of a much larger problem statewide -- something which was previously reported on by the Hutchinson News.

I guess, in an emergency, citizens of Rush County should flee to Ellis County and Hays city where there is at least a hospital system large enough to accommodate most emergency situations.

Let's just hope they can get there in time.

Robert Tilford

La Crosse