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After last year’s tornadoes ravaged Springfield
and knocked out most of the city’s power, hundreds of union members
— including members of the Laborers, Teamsters, Carpenters, and
Operating Engineers unions — stepped in to rescue stranded residents
and remove trees from their homes. Now, with the help of Ward 10 Ald. Tim Griffin,
they’re looking to make it into a permanent gig.
During a recent City Council meeting, Griffin called
on Mayor Tim Davlin and the other aldermen to support a new
emergency-response coalition — a combined Springfield-Sangamon County
initiative that would deploy union volunteers and their equipment to the
hardest-hit areas within 90 minutes of the onset of an emergency situation.
Griffin says the idea for the coalition sprang from
concerns that liability issues kept city response crews from stepping onto
private property to help residents after the March 2006
tornadoes. “There needs to be something that crosses
boundaries here that’s not worried about which side of the sidewalk
something happens on,” Griffin says. “Those tornadoes are
pretty [nondiscriminating]. They don’t go on certain sides of the
sidewalk — they go wherever they hit.”
Brad Schaive, business manager of Laborers Local 477,
is one of the coalition’s main organizers and confirms that all of
Springfield’s local unions are on board. In the event of a disaster, Schaive says, the
locals’ business
managers will sound the alarm, sending hundreds of union members with axes,
chainsaws, and backhoes to the Prairie Capital Convention Center for
assignments. Each union has agreed to play its own role: Teamsters will
clear street debris, Laborers and Carpenters will remove trees from homes
and rescue trapped families, and Operating Engineers will use backhoes to
remove larger debris and fallen trees from neighborhoods.
Schaive says that the goal is not to replace the
city’s emergency agencies but rather to add heavy-equipment-trained,
CPR-certified volunteers to the list of the area’s first responders.
He says that union members are also some of the most committed volunteers.
“If Springfield doesn’t survive, then our
future is very bleak,” Schaive says. “The welfare of
Springfield goes hand in hand in how we provide for our families, and
nothing is more important to our members.”
Basic plans for the emergency-response coalition,
including grants from private donors and designated land and trailers to
store the organization’s equipment until it is needed, have been in
place for more than a year. Now, Griffin says, the coalition will ask the
city for minor grants and for help with coordination efforts so that
volunteers will know where they are needed if a disaster occurs. “We have the people in place and the place in
place,” Griffin says. “Let’s get a big table and sit down
with all of the interested parties and start banging out the details.
Let’s have, by the next time storm season hits, this already behind
us — signed, sealed, and delivered. “The new view of the City Council is
‘Let’s not put off this issue; let’s get with it;
let’s do things. Let’s be proactive, not reactive.’
”
On Tuesday, Ernie Slottag, the city’s
communications director, said that the mayor is “100 percent behind
the coalition” and that city officials have entered into talks with
Griffin to discuss the coalition’s operations.
Contact Amanda Robert at arobert@illinoistimes.com
This article appears in Oct 11-17, 2007.
