CHICKASHA –The City Council approved a resolution by which the city adopted the Grady County Hazard Mitigation Plan for 2024-29.
For the last 20 years Chickasha and virtually every other town and school district in the county were under the umbrella of Grady County’s hazard mitigation plan, said Edward Perez, Chickasha’s new emergency management director.
“The problem was, the county hired a contractor” who didn’t meet a requisite deadline, and consequently the Grady County plan “had been expired for a little over two years,” Perez said.
After a protracted period of acrimony, “Grady County decided ‘we’ll cut our ties’ and began working with a representative from Oklahoma Emergency Management to build a hazard mitigation plan from scratch,” Perez told Southwest Ledger. That plan is “on its way to the Federal Emergency Management Agency for approval,” he said on July 18.
“Every five years, every municipality needs to submit an updated hazard mitigation plan,” Perez told the City Council. Nevertheless, he said, seven other municipalities “are like Grady County: their plans have expired,” which bars them from applying for state or federal hazard mitigation grants to recover from natural or manmade disasters.
Councilman John P. Smith told his colleagues that when he built his house in 2018 he included a storm cellar, for which he received $2,000 in reimbursement from FEMA; the grant was administered by Grady County Emergency Management, Smith recalled.
Perez assumed his duties with the City of Chickasha on Jan. 1, 2024, the day after he retired from the U.S. Air Force as a master sergeant after a 22-year career; at the time he was a flight chief at Tinker Air Force Base.
“I spent my life overseas; we had lived in Asia and Honduras and all over Europe,” he told the Ledger. “When I came here I fell in love with the people and their focus on family.” Perez bought a 60acre farm “with a pond and all kinds of animals” on the south side of Chickasha, and “my kids are finally able to make long-lasting friends.”