Toward the end of May 2021, a lease agreement was put into place for the old Forestdale FD on Rt.130. A facility capable of storage and serving as a base of operations has been in process for several years. With the recent Forestdale property being made available, the EM Department's Director Nelson Andrews Jr, EM Assistant Allyssa Hathaway, and staff Adam Jonas Jr conducted several site visits with the owner before beginning the legal process for the lease agreement. This property will serve as a storage facility for the EM Department's response vehicles and boat, storage racks for supplies and equipment, and base of operations for the growing department.
The Forestdale property, now known as the MWT Emergency Management Station, is located just over the town line from Mashpee and a short ten-minute drive to the Community and Government Center. The EM department is currently focusing on the processing procedures with FEMA and the CDC from the previous year and half of the National COVID-19 Emergency Declaration. Continued grant writing and the preparedness, response, recovery, and mitigation aspects of emergency management are a daily focus, including the emergency public health aspects of combatting the virus. Various training is planned from the station. It includes dive team training, Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) training, Incident Command System (ICS) training, weather safety training, and CPR/First Aid training.
Emergency Management Director Nelson Andrews Jr stated; It is an honor to finally have an operations center geared toward helping to meet the requirements of the EM four pillars of Operations, Planning, Logistics, Finance/Admin. We have an excellent opportunity to expand on our department and provide additional services to our tribe that we all rightfully deserve in the same respect as our state counterparts. I look forward to keeping our tribal community safe and prepared while collaborating with our federal, tribal, state, and local counterparts.
MWT Emergency Management Department Inquiries: (508) 477-0208 Ext 103 / Nelson.Andrewsjr@mwtribe-nsn.gov / Allyssa.Hathaway@mwtribe-nsn.gov.
