County lifts COVID, Hurricane Sally emergency designations

By GUY BUSBY
Posted 7/29/21

BAY MINETTE – While efforts to deal with the situations will continue, the Baldwin County Commission has voted to lift the local states of emergency for COVID-19 and Hurricane Sally.

Zach Hood, …

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County lifts COVID, Hurricane Sally emergency designations

Posted

BAY MINETTE – While efforts to deal with the situations will continue, the Baldwin County Commission has voted to lift the local states of emergency for COVID-19 and Hurricane Sally.

Zach Hood, Baldwin County Emergency Management director, said that while new cases of COVID-19 are being reported, local hospitals are capable of providing care.

“They are seeing cases, but they’re able to handle the cases that they are seeing,” Hood said. “We’re not in a point to where we are overwhelmed.”

He said the supply of personal protective equipment is now enough to meet or exceed demands.

“Our PPE situation is a lot better than it was prior to the heart of when we were fighting this virus at the end of last year,” Hood said.

He said county officials have not had any requests for emergency assistance in more than three months.

“Those are all things that take us from being more of a yellow on the health and medical side to a green and we have been green in all of our areas for this pandemic response for the last 90 days,” Hood told commissioners.

He said COVID-19 cases are increasing on a national level, but vaccines are also now available for adults and teens.

“There’s a rise in cases nationally, but people are getting back out and about,” Hood said. “There are vaccinations available for those individuals that choose to get vaccinated and the majority of the cases we’re seeing locally, nationally, and individuals that are unvaccinated.”

He said recovery efforts following Hurricane Sally, which made landfall in Gulf Shores in September 2020, are continuing, but the county is no longer in an emergency.

“You do still have a community that’s recovering, but as far as county infrastructure goes, we’re green,” Hood said. “We’re not filling requests. We’re not working extra hours or anything like that.”

Cian Harrison, director of finance and accounting, said the county is still working to receive some disaster funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, but money is now coming in.

“It’s something that they should have worked with us on when they submitted it and they did not,” Harrison said. “It got submitted, pushed all the way through review and then they came back with questions. So, we are in the process of working on that as well.”

She said some projects, such as road and culvert repairs, are also still going on.

Commission Chairman Joe Davis said that while the county lifted its emergency declaration, Baldwin officials will still work with local municipalities to make certain that all agencies get the disaster assistance they need.

“Right now there’s still some money outstanding for them,” Davis said. “I want them to understand why we’re doing this and that it doesn’t in any way lessen our desire to help them.”