Hamilton County is looking to hire an executive director of emergency management after Tom Sivak resigned from the position last month for a similar position with the City of Chicago. In his two and a half years at the helm, Sivak has faced several natural disasters including the April 2013 flooding, tornadoes and the polar vortex of 2014. Sivak said each has provided the emergency operations center with a baseline.
“It gives the department an opportunity to build that threshold,” he said. “We didn’t activate a lot, but we can build off of that when we are engaged.”
In addition to having a better understanding of when to activate the emergency operations center, Sivak said the county has focused more on planning 12 and 24 hours out.
“We’ve seen disasters and unfortunate events that have helped us grow stronger,” he said. “It’s hard because there are a lot more things that have to continue to be built upon, like the private-public partnership and strategic planning.”
The county is doing a national search to find Sivak’s replacement.
