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Two DEMA staff members in Hawaii helping with natural disasters

Delaware Public Media
Staffers from Delaware’s Emergency Management Agency (DEMA) are in Hawaii, helping that state battle two natural disasters.";

Heavy rains and an erupting Kilauea volcano in Hawaii has forced officials to reach out to other states for assistance, including Delaware:

 

 

Two members from the Delaware Emergency Management Agency (DEMA) are now in Hawaii.  They headed there last week to work with local and federal officials to help manage the Presidential Disaster Declaration.

DEMA spokesman Gary Laing says two staff members from the agency’s planning section will spend the next 30 days in Kauai on the Emergency Management Assistance Compact (EMAC) mission.

“In April they had extreme rains on the Island of  Kauai. In one 24-hour period they had nearly 50 inches of rain. So they’ve had a lot of flooding, they’ve had landslides, they’ve had

mudslides. But a lot of the emergency management focus has been on the main island of Hawaii and the Kilauea volcano that’s erupting there,” said Laing.

Laing says EMAC is a formal assistance agreement among the 50 states, District of Columbia, and U.S. territories, and approved by the General Assembly.

He notes this is the second time in 2018 DEMA has deployed personnel on an EMAC mission.  The other was to Puerto Rico in January.

 

Kelli Steele has over 30 years of experience covering news in Delaware, Baltimore, Winchester, Virginia, Phoenix, Arizona and San Diego, California.