The most important aspect of any emergency preparedness and disaster mitigation plan is "public involvement."

This also goes for effective law enforcement by the way, especially at the local community level.

This is where we were lacking in Rush County, in my opinion.

We also had the problem of officials in charge of emergency management here who didn't want to respond to citizen concerns, even when those concerns were addressed in writing to county commissioners.

This was reflective, I believe, of a total lack of public accountability on the part of both our elected county officials and the people they appointed to positions of responsibility as it related to emergency management in Rush County.

The other problem we had was an "incomplete" emergency management operation plan for the county, which seems to be getting addressed by way of the public review and comment period before the actual finalization of the Rush County Multi-hazard Mitigation Plan, which may be available to concerned residents as soon as today at www.rushcountykansas.org. Needless to say, this was long overdue.

Finally, the whole process of public review and comment is a huge step forward to getting our house in order to respond effectively to emergency situations at the county level.

I look forward to getting a chance as a citizen of Rush County to review the plan and comment accordingly.

Robert Tilford

La Crosse