County officials are wrapping up a new emergency operations plan that will allow for more nimble responses to large incidents.

Public Safety Director Ken McCorrison told the commissioners during Monday’s work session that the effort has taken nearly a year.

What could be a convoluted document, he stressed, has been boiled down to something “workable, usable…. Someone isn’t going to get lost in the paperwork.”

The county will have to adopt the plan before it can be sent to the county’s municipalities to complete and join.

McCorrison explained that a typical emergency operations response includes 14 emergency support functions.

“We all know we don’t have 14 people,” he said. “This gives us the ability” to form a multi-agency coordinating center. “Four to five key people could manage a larger incident” in the new structure.

“That’s the biggest thing it allows us to do” while still complying with state guidelines. “It’s a living, breathing document.”

McCorrison added that pandemics are listed as a factor in the plan and explained how the pandemic pushed these operations to a virtual model which was “something we never even thought of. (It) worked pretty well for something that wasn’t on everyone’s radar.”