Muskingum Co. EMA Urges Residents to Prepare for Severe Weather

ZANESVILLE, OH – With severe weather predicted for our area this weekend, the Muskingum County Emergency Management Agency wants to make sure you’re prepared.

Jeff Jadwin, the Muskingum County EMA Director, recommends putting a go bag together with your family as well as practicing escape drills before the bad weather hits. In the go bags he suggests packing extra clothes, medications, food, water, as well as cash.

Jadwin also recommends signing up for the County’s reverse 911 or getting a weather alert app so you can stay up to date on the outside conditions.

“You need to get those warnings early so that you know that storms are going to happen and you need to be prepared,” Jadwin said. “We don’t know when they’re going to hit, some are going to hit in the daytime, some are going to hit at night, it’s going to be, for us, we’re watching temperatures and fronts like your meteorologists do so that we can anticipate what’s going to happen and for our office to be prepared to respond.”

Jadwin said to pay attention to your surroundings when severe weather rears its ugly head. If you drive up to a road that is submerged in water to turn around and drive away, do not get out of your car. Jadwin said it only takes a few feet of water to be able to move a person or a vehicle.

He also recommends calling his office or the sheriff’s office if a roadway becomes blocked due to water or debris.

“We need to know when there’s damage, you know, a tree falls on a house or a building, a building gets blown over by straight line winds,” Jadwin said. “We need to know that so we can report it up to the National Weather Service, to the State, and in the unfortunate case would be where it’s so severe we’ve got to report it up to FEMA.”

If you’d like to sign up for Muskingum County’s reverse 911 alert system, you can head to muskingumcountyoh.gov