Preparing for the next disaster.

Are we ready?

And making sure there's a safety net for children and families in the cities.

Bethany for Children and Families has a new leader after its longtime president retired.

Coming up, meet Laura Ingram as she takes over the city's social services provider.

But first planning for a disaster.

Scott County Emergency Management Director Brian Payne was named Iowa's emergency manager of the year for Iowa.

He leads an agency at a time when disaster costs are on the rise, and federal involvement in paying for recovery costs may be over.

President Trump is calling for a dismantling of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

FEMA, at the end of this hurricane season.

So what does this mean and how do we now prepare?

Brian Payne joined us to explain.

Well, congratulations on the award.

Emergency manager of the year for Iowa.

Last year, the key to emergency, planning is what?

Coordination and figuring out what to do in a worst case scenario.

Yeah, that's quite a bit about what it is, honestly.

You know, our top priority is partnerships and relationships.

And I know that may seem a little silly when we talk about it like that, but, you know, we only have three and a half employees.

So when you have that really bad disaster, that horrible event taking place, and we open up the county's emergency operations center, to be quite blunt about it, we could send out a message right now through our messaging system, and we could have anywhere from 40 to 55 plus people in our emergency operations center supporting that community or those multiple communities involved.

And then in conjunction with that is the planning components exercising, training, pushing and pulling information prior to about event happening and then post that event, you know, quick action tools, just checklists.

You know, there's a lot of different components that come into it.

I'm thinking of four huge disasters right off the bat.

I'm always thinking of flooding.

Of course I would think of like a tornado hitting.

I would think of some industrial incident, an explosion and the Cordova Nuclear Power plant.

Those are the four that I would think of.

Yeah, that are a top of the list that that would involve the emergency management planning and quick response.

Very much so.

And we actually do quite a bit of planning for all of those different things.

Flooding, you know, is this is a good and bad.

We're very used to river flooding in the community.

All the residents are used to it.

Those who are impacted are used to it.

But you know, you always have those.

2019 is a really great example of that.

You know, not only do we break the Heights record, but we broke the longevity record.

And it was a very volatile year where we came very close to having some significant issues.

So we work through planning and different aspects like that.

You know, we can tell you to the 10th of an inch, the different gauges of what actions and may be done from the community, government perspective, you know, whether that's a pump, whether that's gate valves, whatever that may be look like.

Right.

All the way down through the tornado is in different things.

So a lot of our planning is an all hazard, component to where we know what our resources are.

So if we need to open a shelter, while there's little finite details that matter for opening a shelter, opening a shelter.

Right.

So we have shelter plans.

We work through the partnerships on those.

And, you know, it's it's it's all about all hazard and plug in and play an important push and pull on what needs to be done.

And every incident is so much different.

I mean, if it is a tornado, it has happened within seconds and you have to deal with it over a period of weeks.

When it's a flood, it takes as you know, forever.

But I'm like you are saying, I mean a flood.

We're used to that.

Any other disaster really would be a shock to the system.

It could be potentially.

And it is very situational.

You know, a lot of the classes we teach and the things we talk about is, let's say in every emergency or disaster, there are ten things that need to be controlled in that event.

Right?

So a lot of our pre event that we work through is about controlling the things that we can control, right.

For example, we have no control over where that tornado touches down.

We have no control over the size of the tornado.

You know the equity aspects of our community members being there, insurance, no insurance.

You know, there are so many things that will always be out of our control.

And we work really hard before that event to try and control everything we can education to the public, education to our community partners.

How do we respond when we do respond?

Where are we opening up shelters or evacuation points?

You know, feeding locations.

I mean, there's a lot of different components that go into that from that planning perspective.

And there's also so many different agencies.

I mean, you're talking about nonprofits that are involved.

You're talking about local government, whether it's police, county government, whether it's the sheriff or state police, and even the federal level.

And let's talk about the federal level for a moment, because we're looking at FEMA being cut.

Perhaps dramatically after the hurricane season ends, which would be November 1st.

How important has FEMA been, to disaster relief in, in Scott County or even in the Quad Cities, period?

Yeah.

So a lot of what we see here in the Midwest, you know, and specifically since I've been a part of Scott County, is FEMA is very, active in that recovery phase, you know, some of the hurricane states, for example, they see more activity from FEMA during a response phase of an emergency or even, you know, the hurricane.

Right.

They're there in support of prior to even the hurricane hits land.

We don't traditionally see that here in our area.

FEMA is very much that recovery partner, whether that's from the government nonprofit side, from a presidential declaration for public assistance or individual assistance for our residents that are a little bit more locally that need support on the recovery.

And, and we are monitoring that very closely, as you can imagine, just like everyone else in the country.

I mean, from a response perspective, we're not necessarily concerned 99%.

Like I said, we've never seen them support the response of a very comfortable in our ability to respond.

And we know what our mutual aid partners are, whether that's county to county or our support from the state that comes in.

But we do have a lot of questions when it comes to the FEMA side for recovery.

Now, of what will that look like?

Well, as you said, I mean, it's very much when the disaster happens.

That's when you see the Red cross come in.

That's when you see FEMA come in.

It's like, come the end of this year, are you going to have to find a way to figure out how to do the recovery aspect, or will that be on somebody else's, burden, so to speak?

Yeah.

So we've always supported recovery.

Our agency does, we're not a primary member of that recovery aspect, because there's a lot of nonprofits and there's a lot of other entities.

Chamber of Commerce.

I mean, there's so many other partners we have that come into play, you know, so it's not just a one person or one entity type of, response.

Everything we're being told, at least from the state of Iowa, is, you know, they're looking at pushing more back to the state for state responsibility and state oversight.

So whether that is, hypothetically, the state hiring subcontractors to replace those FEMA box, the state hiring additional personnel to manage that level.

We're being told that all of the resources and what had been there will still be there.

It may take a little bit more of an impact or justification for us to receive that support, from that.

But we're being told that it's still going to be there, but until everything gets finalized at the federal level and they start pushing on what that's going to look like, we have questions still.

Right?

In the meantime, we're working very closely with our local partners, disaster ready Quad Cities, for example.

That's a bunch of, agencies that come together.

For example, Kelly Johnson with the Community Foundation runs our long term recovery.

She, she and her team do an incredible job.

In the last five years, they've granted out $1.8 million of donations for recovery support.

I mean, so it's all about having the team together, and we're going to work and adapt and do whatever we need to do to support the community.

It's almost a horrible blessing, the flooding, because because it has tested, relief efforts, as well as, the planning even before, before it hits.

It seems like the Quad Cities is really well positioned, because of the experience of flooding.

You know, I can't speak for other communities, but I can.

I can speak on the aspect of what we've seen.

You know, I feel very blessed to work in this community.

We have incredible partners, whether that's from the first responders to the other nonprofits, to everyone, you know, even just neighbor helping neighbor, you know, I mean, it's never about, hey, what's in this for me, right?

It's hey, this community needs this.

Another community provides, you know, whatever, whatever is needed at that point in time.

It's just about getting the right people in the room and saying, here's what's going on, here's what we need.

And people just come out of the woodwork wanting to support.

So I feel very confident that we're going to be able to weather the storm just fine, to where the residents don't hopefully see any difference at all.

One area that I know that, you're always trying to improve is communications, of course.

And I think you tested the wireless emergency alert system, a new use of technology because everything's now it.

We used to wait for the sirens to go off.

It's not that way anymore.

Is what I'm getting to.

Well, so, you know, it's just one more tool in the toolbox, to be honest with you.

And sirens are a very interesting, emergency notification tool.

And every time the sirens go off, at least in Scott County, you know, we receive a lot of, I won't call them complaints, but concerns or recommendations to make policy changes.

And, you know, when we look at all these different things, we have a lot of different tools in there.

But the wireless emergency alert system is most likely going to be the future of what we're looking at, you know, but again, when we look at the emergency communication aspect of it, you know, it's just one more tool there that we can help make sure that we're trying to hit as many people as possible, to let them know that there is a hazard, seek shelter.

What are that information is, the benefit to the wireless emergency alerting in comparison to, for example, the siren, is when you receive that on your phone, it it will have written instructions for what protective action recommendations are recommended versus the siren being there.

And, you know, it goes off.

And to be honest with you, we receive a lot of information of what didn't wake me up in the middle of the night.

I don't know how many times I've, you know, explained and educated residents or community members that it's an outdoor warning system.

It's not intended to wake you up in the middle of the night.

You know, it's it's professionally.

Honestly, sometimes I get concerned.

It's a false sense of security in those certain situations.

And so what is the key then?

As far as, the use of this type of, wireless communication, because you have so many different entities, that, that could declare an emergency of some sort or at least declare a warning, an alert.

So the FCC and the federal government actually have regulation in place that states when these emergency alerts can and can't be used, and how we can and can't leverage them, you know, so, for example, if we were to have a hazardous materials response, no matter what the cause was, but we needed to evacuate a certain portion of the population or shelter them in place, you know, that qualifies as one of those types of emergency alerts to be able to provide that emergent protective action or action recommendation.

If there was an active shooter or an active threat that we were aware of, then we can adequately get the information and and then be able to publish that out to avoid or to encourage members of the community to avoid certain portions of the community.

Right.

Those are things we're working towards to be able to leverage this and activate this on a more regular basis when needed and when appropriate.

Don't get me wrong.

Thankfully, we don't have that many bad things happening words daily.

But we want to leverage it to the ability that we can because it is a great tool and we want the members of our community to start becoming more familiar with it and understanding the lifesaving component that could be there for them.

How is it available to people?

Because like you said, it's on the phone, but how do you get phone numbers?

Yeah.

So, there's two different things with this, you know, so the wireless emergency alerts and the most common one that I use as an example is Amber alert messaging.

Right.

So on on an Android phone or your iPhone, you get a select where do you want to receive them or not, to include the text messages that we send out on an annual basis.

Besides that, when it looks at the emergencies, are the more urgent message in the we call it Alert Iowa system.

You can come to our website.

You can select what emergency messaging you want to get.

But it is two different pieces of that, you know.

So for example, if we issue or the National Weather Service issue a severe thunderstorm watch, you know, because of that, watch is a county wide geo shape file.

Anyone that registers to receive that message will get a text message, a phone call, an email, whatever they want to receive in that now as it comes, if they want to get a severe thunderstorm warning, that's where it gets a little bit more tricky to to explain.

If the National Weather Service issues that warning in your address, your home address, where you register your account, you may not get that text message or that phone call.

And furthermore, if the weather the warning is severe enough, you may or may not get that Amber alert type message either, because it all goes off the shapefile of where that actual warning is instituted.

And that's exactly where the confusion comes in.

In the education that we're trying to do a better job of of helping the public and helping our community partners, for that matter, understand what this means to empower them for hopefully better decision making on their end, to make sure they can stay safe.

And do you think that the people of Scott County are safe?

Are they prepared for the next disaster?

I think there's always room for improvement, but honestly, I think a lot of that comes too with my profession.

That's in the water.

Right?

I mean, we're we're always trying to make improvements.

We're always trying to help others make improvements.

You know, I mean, there's no perfect.

There are always things outside of our control.

And, you know, we just want to make sure we're doing our part.

Do I think overall, our community is prepared?

I absolutely do think we're prepared.

Could it be better?

I'm always going to sit here on any TV in front of any politician and say, we could always do better, because that's what we should be striving for, is to do what we can, because it's all about keeping people safe and serving the people.

Our thanks to Brian Payne, Scott County emergency Management director.

Still to come, Bethany for Children and Families has a new leader and the top Republican leader in the Illinois House tells us about her civic spark.

But first, a look at area events.

Thanks to visit Quad Cities.

Check out the things to do this week in the Quad Cities.

Start your week off enjoying carnival rides, live music, fun activities, and so much more at the Rock Island County Fair.

Food Truck Friday this week will feature a spectacular firework show on July 18th, then get ready for an unforgettable night at the circa 21 Dinner Playhouse, where you can watch Mary Poppins on stage.

Next, head over to the Rust Belt to experience the food truck fight on July 12th.

Then finally, the Alice Collective is hosting a tween book club on Sunday, July 20th.

For more events like these, check out our events calendar at visit Quad cities.com.

Bethany for Children and Families is a child welfare, mental health, community education and social services provider for western Illinois and eastern Iowa.

This month, Laura Ingram took over as president and CEO after longtime president doctor Bill Steinhauser retired.

Now, Bethany is involved in many areas of social services from helping a leave homelessness to mental health help for children and adults to foster care, family and individual therapy and pregnancy prevention.

Laura Ingram sat down to talk about her mission as Bethany's new leader.

Well, first off, welcome.

Tell me, what drew you to this job at Bethany?

I love the mission.

I love what they stand for.

I love the programs that Bethany provides.

I love that they focus on the family from keeping the family together in every way possible and providing those supports.

And if they can't keep the family together, then, the focus turns to keeping the children safe and finding a family who's willing to step in.

Let's talk about the size of Bethany.

It has really grown.

It's a $20 million nonprofit, 130 employees and more than 20 programs.

It has a broad scope in the cities.

Absolutely.

Yes.

There's multiple reasons why a family has barriers to being stable.

And some of those are mental health issues.

Some of those are generational poverty where people don't have the housing or the employment that they need in order to get ahead.

So a lot of the Bethany programs have been created in order to provide those supports at every level for a family, something as simple as providing furniture for a family to have a bed for their child to sleep on.

So, they run the gamut of the programs that Bethany provides.

And I think over the years those have been created out of necessity because the families that were served needed those supports.

The real object is to keep the family together, to keep that bond together.

A lot of it has to do with economic issues as well as mental health issues.

How does Bethany step in to help provide and stabilize a family to keep it together?

Absolutely.

There.

The intact family supports are amazing and so they have social workers and other resources that are partnerships in the community.

So Bethany can't do it all by themselves.

And to me, that's the most beautiful marriage with nonprofits is when people are referring back and forth to other local community resources.

So Bethany has case managers, caring, thoughtful, genuine humans who spend time with those families and the parents and help them to figure out how to, change their parenting style or to figure out how to support a child that has multiple complex needs.

And many children do, even when they're loved.

They may have issues at school, they might have behavior problems.

They might have mental health problems that the child is dealing with.

So the intact family support really wraps around those families and then helps them to find some resources.

Because sometimes if you can solve an issue of economics, then it makes, the whole household less stressful.

And so the parents are then able to, you know, focus more on the child and have a stable roof over your head is another prime component.

Absolutely.

And that's hard to do these days in every state is not just here.

It is a challenge.

Affordable housing is really challenging.

And, the prices have gone up considerably and families have a very hard time with affording either rent or to purchase a home.

And so when the vast majority or all of your income goes to housing makes it very hard, you know, to do the other things that your family needs.

You are new to Bethany.

Tell me about, what you think is your immediate goal.

When you know that you've taken over?

Well, my immediate goal is to listen a lot and to learn.

There are amazing human beings who work at this organization, many of whom have worked there for 20 and 30 years.

They are long standing pillars of the community, well-respected people who are very knowledgeable in their field.

And so I'm going to learn, I'm going to listen.

I'm going to meet a lot of people.

I'm excited to meet the foster families.

I'm excited to meet the children that we serve.

I'm spending a lot of this week touring around and seeing all of the different programs and I love to meet the people that are served in every organization I've ever worked in.

I love to ask them what we're doing right and what we might need to work on.

And so I'm going to listen a lot for quite some time and hear, the contributions that I believe that I can make, my experience in nonprofit, I certainly am capable of developing funding for the organization.

That's a focus that I've had on food security in North Carolina for the last ten years.

I love bringing, funding into an organization that allows them to do more creative things.

And when we're talking about fundraising, of course, we're also talking at a time when we're seeing more federal cutbacks and, and perhaps in some areas, state cutbacks as well.

It is more challenging than ever to be a nonprofit right now.

I find that that makes it more fun, actually.

I like a challenge.

So, you know, it's never been easy.

Nonprofit work and social services has never been easy.

So there's always been challenges.

There are unique challenges today than there were a few years ago.

But I really like the challenge.

And I feel like when it comes to funding an organization and the fact that we might need to diversify our funding a bit more, than government contracts.

What I love is that donors will support something that they believe is an investment in their community.

That includes individual donors, that includes businesses, foundations.

So there's no doubt when you see what Bethany does for this community, there's no doubt that it's a good investment.

The same way that they might make a good investment in the stock market.

This is investing in your neighbors.

So I have no doubt that there I've already met many wonderful people in this community who I believe will invest in Bethany, and that they understand that that type of funding allows for more flexibility so that we can pay the staff what they deserve to be paid so that we can keep the lights on.

There's there's expenses to running a nonprofit, just as there are expenses to running any business.

Well, and Bethany, like we said, has a big footprint in the cities and in Clinton as well.

We talked about mental health.

We talked about homelessness, but also having good health, making good, healthy choices, especially for young teenagers or children, is also a prime example of what Bethany does.

Absolutely, yes.

And I think a lot of that is around some of the things that young people are facing.

It's very complex.

I have teenagers, they have different stressors than they used to.

And especially, you know, with, with phones and online communication and constantly being accessible, they have a lot of stressors.

And a lot of the programs that Bethany provides are around education, allowing young people to talk about what's difficult for them and the stressors in 2025 that are very different.

And then they also need additional supports, you know, they also offer housing, which is an amazing resource for young people who are really struggling.

And some of the other resources locally and throughout the United States, shelters can be great.

But they're not really a longer term solution.

And so the options that Bethany offers really help them to stabilize and to stay there for a while until they can find a better situation.

It used to be thought of that shelters, although temporary, was a good solution.

But transitional housing and getting people into their own independent living, it seems to be the crucial move.

So much for so many nonprofits these days.

Yeah.

Provide stability.

I mean, everybody needs to know where they're going at the end of the day.

And shelters have a place.

They absolutely do, and they provide an emergency need for folks who are on the streets, especially if it's incredibly cold or incredibly hot.

You know, there are dangers to sleeping outside, period.

But, you know, having that consistency, it takes time to get back on your feet.

It takes time to find a better job.

It takes time to stabilize your mental health.

So that isn't something that typically happens in a week.

These are complex problems.

They take a while to develop and then they take a while, to solve for people.

What's your long term goal then?

I mean, because you talk about stability of families, stability for nonprofits is critically important as well.

Absolutely.

Sure.

And I think that's going to be an ongoing need for nonprofits to continue to think about is how do we evolve?

How do we stay relevant?

How do we stay innovative?

I think that's something that Bethany has done, as you've said, with Bill at the helm for many years, that they've been able to keep reinventing themselves and keep listening to the community.

And so as people change, as families change, their needs change.

And if you keep providing the same services that you did 30 years ago, you all of a sudden become ineffective.

And so that is my long term goal, is that I would keep learning, that I would keep focusing on best practice, that I would keep researching and understanding the right way to help families.

And what I have found in my career is that when you ask them, they will tell you.

So it's it's interesting to me that we spend all this time trying to figure out how to help people when they will tell you if you ask them, you know, what kind of supports they need and what helps their family.

So I intend to do that throughout my entire career.

And my hope for Bethany is that it continues to do amazing work in the community, and that stabilizes children and stabilizes families.

And every community wants all of the families to be thriving.

I think I've never met anybody who doesn't want people to be stable in their community.

So it it's a very, in my opinion, a very simple mission to explain.

There are lots of complexities behind the scenes, but we all have the same goal that families would be stable and that children would be thriving, and they would have every opportunity that we would want our own children to have.

Our thanks to the executive director for Bethany for Children and Families, Laura Ingram.

Now we're asking community leaders in eastern Iowa and western Illinois about their civic spark.

What has drawn them to the careers they've chosen and the jobs they do that impact our communities.

It's part of our salute to the nation's 250th birthday in 2026.

Today, Illinois House Minority Leader Tony McComb, Republican from Savannah.

What is her civic spark?

Really, my story starts as a small business owner, and that's that's key for our success in America, right?

So for for me, it started there.

And getting more active and involved with local government and from local government, not being happy per se with how things were going.

You know, the government should be working for us.

We shouldn't be working for the government.

So for me, it was about being upset with how things were going.

Especially in a small community that has lost so much of this, of an army depot with the loss of population, with the loss of a hospital.

So for me, it was the government should be working for us, not the opposite way.

So I just got more involved really, because of that.

Our thanks to Illinois House Minority Leader Tony McComb, Republican from Savannah.

On the air, on the radio, on the web, on your mobile device and streaming on your computer.

Thanks for taking some time to join us.

As we talk about the issues on the city's