Sedgwick County emergency staff brief Wichita council on EOC roles, recovery planning

Sedgwick County emergency management officials on Tuesday briefed Wichita city leaders on how the county and city would activate and staff the Emergency Operations Center (EOC), who would make decisions during a crisis and how long-term recovery would be organized.

Julie Stimpson, Sedgwick County Emergency Management director, and Brian Ellis, operations manager, led a tabletop scenario focused on recovery rather than first-response tactics. Stimpson recounted the 04/29/2022 tornado and said local donors raised more than $900,000 to help residents and businesses recover — an outcome she used to underscore how high federal-assistance thresholds can force communities to rely on local resources. "I like to call recovery as the forgotten phase of disasters," Stimpson said, urging elected officials to prepare for weeks or months of recovery work.

Ellis described what a full EOC activation looks like: "We're bringing in all of our emergency response agencies," he said, listing hospitals, public works, GIS, mass-care partners such as the American Red Cross, United Way and Salvation Army, and strategic communications staff. The county's EOC map shows 21 workstations organized by function; staff said city of Wichita staff at those desks could access the Wichita network and files during activations.

On short-term sheltering, Stimpson said duration is "weeks" depending on circumstances and memoranda of understanding with partners. She estimated that a relatively small share of affected people typically use formal shelters — roughly 10 percent — because many stay with family or friends. For long-term housing needs, she said the community faces significant challenges if hundreds of homes are lost and that coordination with chambers, realtors and private partners will be necessary.

The briefing also covered operational details: PIOs will operate from a joint information center to coordinate unified messaging and field deployments; utilities such as Evergy can provide outage data that helps estimate damage extent; FAA rules and local agreements constrain drone use in airport no-fly zones, so coordinated agency or Civil Air Patrol flights are used for aerial assessments. Ellis added that when local resources are taxed, the county will request state assistance through KDAM to bring mutual-aid resources from other jurisdictions.

Training and documentation received repeated emphasis. Stimpson said staff record costs, hours and overtime from the outset so the jurisdiction can document expenses for potential recovery or reimbursement: "If you don't do that, you're creating a nightmare down the road to backpedal to recover those costs," she said. The county announced a planned full EOC activation exercise in February–March that will test resource management and attempt to staff all 21 desks; council members were invited to observe.

A council member asked whether decisions taken by a majority of the council at the EOC require a special meeting or can be ratified later. City manager Lane responded that there are emergency exceptions and that officials may make decisions at the EOC that are later brought back to the council for ratification: "You would be making some decisions at the EOC and then we would bring it back and ratify it," Lane said.

Next steps from the briefing include the scheduled full EOC exercise in early 2026, continued invitations for council members to participate in training and a proposed joint-government presentation on long-term recovery planning and policy options.