MCP in the News: DETCOG Approves Disaster Operations Plan for Region

This article originally appeared in The Lufkin Daily News and can be viewed here.

The Deep East Texas Council of Governments approved a continuity of operations disaster recovery plan for the Regional 9-1-1 Network on Thursday.

“We had started actually last year, this is not related to the pandemic, although the pandemic was quite insightful in developing a plan,” Van Bush, the director of the 911 program, said.

DETCOG engaged Mission Critical Partners, a public safety consulting firm, to develop the plan. It took longer than anticipated to create because of COVID-19 but benefited in that delay because a plan could be created with the pandemic in mind, Bush said.

“With 911 being a vital service, we need to have something to pull off the shelf in the event of a disaster,” he said. “This is not the kind of disaster we’d anticipated when we started this, but it has been a disaster.”