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Flood waters near Dardanelle, Arkansas.
Fighting Floodwater in Arkansas
O
n May 25, 2019, the crest of a record-breaking flood on the Arkansas River entered the state of Arkansas in Sebastian County. Caused by heavy rainfall in the Oklahoma region, the flood would overtop and breach several levees, causing damage to public and private property, severely disrupting freight traffic on the river, and posing a risk to private well water. The Arkansas Department of Emergency Management (ADEM) was the agency in charge of the response. In this interview, ADEM Director A.J. Gary speaks with Municipal Water Leader Managing Editor Joshua Dill about the historic flood and the coordinated response that his agency has led. Joshua Dill: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position.
24 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER
Joshua Dill: Please give us an overview of ADEM and its main duties. A.J. Gary: ADEM is one of the few state emergency management departments in the nation that has dual roles. We handle not only emergency management but homeland security as well. We push out homeland security grants for things like hazardous materials response, weapons of mass destruction response, SWAT teams, and bomb squads, and we build regional teams around the state that draw from local fire and police departments. On the emergency management side, we do all the planning and training for any type of emergency, whether natural or manmade. We manage a lot of grants on the emergency management side as well. Through the Emergency Management Performance Grant, which is a federal grant, we help support a county emergency manager in each of Arkansas’s 75 counties. Every month, we conduct exercises with our state, local, and city partners to make sure that everyone is ready for an emergency. We’re a 24/7 operation. We have duty officers taking calls day and night for events that may not rise to the level of a disaster, but which local authorities may need some additional resources to address. For example, a couple weeks ago, a hiker was lost for several days. The county in which he was hiking needed a helicopter a with forward-
PHOTO COURTESY OF JOCELYN AUGUSTINO.
A.J. Gary: My background is mostly in law enforcement. I worked for the Conway Police Department in central Arkansas for 20 years. During that time, I worked in several different areas of law enforcement, including field investigations, narcotics, and the SWAT team. In 2000, I was appointed interim police chief of the City of Conway. In 2002, after 20 years, I left the police department and moved into the private sector, working as head of security for an international airline for about 5 years. I then went back to the Conway Police Department as police chief. I remained in that position for a little over 8 years, at which time I took a job with the State of Arkansas and was then
appointed by Governor Hutchinson to be the director of ADEM as well as his homeland security advisor.
