By Mark Ambrogi
As the new executive director of Hamilton County Emergency Management, Erin Rowe sees relationship building as an important factor in her job.
“We make the partners and relationships before an incident happens,” said Rowe, who started her job on July 13. “You don’t want to meet the fire chief for the first time at a huge residential fire for example. I think that’s a big aspect of the job.”
The Noblesville resident said it is also important to make sure everyone is prepared for potential incidents in the county.
“We’re a very rural county up in the north and we’re very urban in the south,” Rowe said. “We have flooding and that’s a big concern for Hamilton County in a lot of areas. Severe weather and winter are also concerns.”
Rowe, 34, received her bachelor of science in criminal justice with a concentration in public safety management from IUPUI in 2011. She previously pursued an associate degree after graduating from Brownsburg High School.
“I took some time off and got some real world job experience before I decided I wanted to go back and focus my energies somewhere else,” Rowe said.
Rowe has completed the FEMA Emergency Management Institute’s Professional Development Series, is trained as an Emergency Management Assistance Compact Advance Team member and was part of the Indiana State Incident Management Team.
“Emergency preparedness has always kind of sparked my interest since post 9/11, that’s when there were education programs focused on emergency management,” she said. “I thought, ‘What can I do to help make a difference?’ Emergency management preparedness, response, recovery, mitigating, but it’s also that human element we want to protect life and property.”
Rowe started as an emergency planner for Indiana Department of Homeland Security. She was the lead planner for multiple state-level operational plans. She was pressed into action during the tornado that hit Henryville, Ind., hard in March of 2012.
“Talk about a baptism by fire,” Rowe said. “I was hired in December and Henryville tornado happened in March.”
She also served as planning section chief in the State EOC.
Rowe was instrumental in the state’s ability to deploy 175 personnel, under various Emergency Management Assistance Compact contracts with New York and New Jersey and Maryland in response to Hurricane Sandy in 2012.
Over a period of four weeks, she assisted in developing staffing plans and tracked deployed personnel and assets. She later became IDHS’ operations section chief, where she was responsible for the creation of informational seminars and training courses as needed.
Rowe served as an emergency management coordinator for the IUPUI campus, responsible for the development, review and maintenance of campus public safety plans, policies and procedures for the overall emergency management and continuity program at IUPUI for one and a half years.
“Having the Indy Eleven there brought on a whole different aspect,” Rowe said.
She said with IUPUI being such an urban campus, hosting sporting events with more than 10,000 people was a new experience for the campus.
Rowe and her husband Dave have one daughter, Camryn, who turns 2 in November.
“The closer she got to school age we wanted her to be up in Hamilton County,” Rowe said. “We’ve very glad to be up here.”
