HUTTO — In just three months at the helm of Hutto’s emergency management department, Director Jake Isbell has accomplished quite a bit. His latest accolade: earning the city recognition as a StormReady community by the National Weather Service.
“This involved us looking over our policies, our plans, our emergency notifications, our public preparedness campaigns like the recent severe weather spotting training that our citizens were able to go through,” Isbell told City Council at Thursday’s meeting.
Some requirements for this certification include establishing a 24-hour warning point and emergency operations center, having more than one way to receive severe weather warnings and to alert the public, creating a local system that monitors weather conditions, promoting public readiness and developing a formal hazardous weather plan.
Paul Yura, warning coordination meteorologist with the National Weather Service presented the award.
“Many decades ago, the National Weather Service started a program to recognize communities that would go above and beyond weather preparedness. We call it StormReady,” Yura said.
“Weather is going to happen. We can’t stop it. We know disaster is going to happen. The best thing we can do is be prepared,” he said.
Yura told council members that the process of becoming StormReady creates a relationship between the National Weather Service and the city’s emergency management department so that Isbell’s team will receive early notifications on watches and warnings. Hutto will also have a pathway to get the latest information on how severe a weather event may become in order to prepare residents.
“All this just creates that communication back and forth that you need to have during a weather disaster. We all know that meeting people for the first time, it’s not the time to do that during a disaster. You need to have already built those relationships,” Yura said.
Hutto’s certification will be active through 2028 before needing to be reviewed for renewal.
Hutto joins 267 sites across Texas to have earned the designation, including 120 communities and 65 counties.
Williamson County’s Office of Emergency Management has been certified as StormReady since 2017. Yura pointed out benefits of this relationship to the Williamson County Commissioners Court when he renewed their recognition last month.
“During quiet and active weather, communication between Williamson County and the National Weather Service remains frequent and strong, a direct result of this great partnership that has been established,” he said.
In commending Hutto, the meteorologist said that having a strong emergency management team with a good outreach and education program is especially important in a fast-growing city.
“As more and more people come in, maybe more and more people who are not familiar with things like the flash flooding aspect of this area, it becomes really important to make sure you have this great team, the office of emergency management, to be able to kind of guide those citizens and keep them safe,” he said.
