Kansas City News
By Clark Blank
JEFFERSON CITY | The Missouri National Guard plans to start training some of the state’s prison inmates to help it during natural disasters and other emergencies.
Missouri Guard Maj. Tammy Spicer said that under the proposal, the inmates would become a more formalized part of the Guard’s disaster response. She said it would give the Guard a larger and better trained pool of workers to respond to emergencies.
The training would focus on skills such as filling and stacking sandbags and removing debris.
“We’re trying to do something better for Missourians,” Spicer said.
Inmates have been used in the past to help local officials during floods and other emergencies. Over the past several years, they have worked to shore up levies and fill sandbags along flooding rivers from near St. Louis to northwestern Missouri.
Earlier this year, Gov. Jay Nixon allowed 37 inmates from a prison in St. Joseph to help stack sandbags along Interstate 29 near Craig, Mo., to protect the highway from a flooded Missouri River.
In 2008, nearly 150 inmates from prisons across the state were among those fortifying levees near the Mississippi River in northeastern Missouri. And in 2007, prison inmates and the National Guard worked to protect a water treatment plant, schools and an ethanol plant from floodwater near Craig.
Read more: http://www.kansascity.com/2010/12/23/2540163/missouri-inmates-to-be-trained.html#ixzz19Pia4S9y
By Clark Blank
JEFFERSON CITY | The Missouri National Guard plans to start training some of the state’s prison inmates to help it during natural disasters and other emergencies.
Missouri Guard Maj. Tammy Spicer said that under the proposal, the inmates would become a more formalized part of the Guard’s disaster response. She said it would give the Guard a larger and better trained pool of workers to respond to emergencies.
The training would focus on skills such as filling and stacking sandbags and removing debris.
“We’re trying to do something better for Missourians,” Spicer said.
Inmates have been used in the past to help local officials during floods and other emergencies. Over the past several years, they have worked to shore up levies and fill sandbags along flooding rivers from near St. Louis to northwestern Missouri.
Earlier this year, Gov. Jay Nixon allowed 37 inmates from a prison in St. Joseph to help stack sandbags along Interstate 29 near Craig, Mo., to protect the highway from a flooded Missouri River.
In 2008, nearly 150 inmates from prisons across the state were among those fortifying levees near the Mississippi River in northeastern Missouri. And in 2007, prison inmates and the National Guard worked to protect a water treatment plant, schools and an ethanol plant from floodwater near Craig.
Read more: http://www.kansascity.com/2010/12/23/2540163/missouri-inmates-to-be-trained.html#ixzz19Pia4S9y
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