Eastern Colorado Incident Management Team: First Colorado Incident Response Team Memorandum of Understanding Signed

Contact: Larry Helmerick, Team Public Information Officer - larryhelmerick@att.net or at (303) 638-9660

FIRST COLORADO INCIDENT RESPONSE TEAM MEMORANDUM OF UNDERSTANDING SIGNED

CENTENNIAL, CO. Dec. 8, 2009--Cooperative efforts between the Colorado Department of Agriculture (CDA), the Eastern Colorado Incident Management Team and officials from Weld County have created the first ever Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for All-Hazard team response within Colorado. The MOU allows CDA to call up the Eastern Colorado Type-3 Team to assist in management of domestic agricultural incidents when CDA determines the needs of the incident exceed current staff and resource capabilities.

Agriculture Commissioner John Stulp and Weld County Sheriff John Cooke signed the agreement recently. The Weld County Sheriff is the Sponsoring Agency for the team and can activate the entire 40 member team, or elements of the team to assist during crisis operations within Colorado. Commissioners of Kiowa County stepped in to assist in procuring items funded by Agriculture to equip the team with communication, logistical and other support items. Because of this agreement, other counties may also be able to use selected parts of the emergency response equipment when the team is not deployed.

Chad Ray, Incident Commander of the team said, “this is a big step for the CDA and the Team that allows us to assist Agriculture and support them during any incident.” The Team has already deployed to Alamosa during the salmonella outbreak, supported the State Division of Emergency Management, the Democratic National Convention and provided wildland fire and blizzard emergency assistance since being organized in 2007.

The Team is made up of response professionals from all disciplines including safety, planning, operations, logistics, administration, finance, liaison, information and other specialties.