Thursday, May 24, 2012
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BATTLE CREEK — Kellogg Community College Academic Advisor, Emily Horsman, received a call early Thursday morning from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) asking her to get on the next flight to Washington D.C. to go on yet another 4-6 week volunteering mission for the agency.
Horsman, a 20 year member of the National Associate for Search and Rescue, will spend three days in Emmettsburg, Maryland receiving training, immunizations, health screenings, and updating paperwork. After that, she will be put in a group of approximately 15-20 other volunteers and sent to a disaster area to begin working with the people in the area to meet their basic needs. "A lot of times, these people have nothing but the clothes on their back and we're there to help them with food, shelter, and to keep them calm," she said.
This isn't the Battle Creek resident's first trip of this kind. In 2004 when Hurricane Ivan tore through the Southeastern part of the United States, FEMA turned to police, fire, coast guard, and the search and rescue agencies for volunteers. Horsman, who had years of experience doing search and rescue with her German shepherd, responded and has been working with them ever since. Now trained as a Generalist for the agency, she can assess damage, determine clean-up needs, order clean-up details, and assess monetary damages, but most of the time she's just there to help the people. "During Hurricane Katrina, we spent an entire week driving around Texas just looking for people in fields. People would get on a bus to evacuate and then just get off wherever the bus stopped and end up living in the fields. Our job was to find them, talk to them to see if there were homeless, and try to help them," said Horsman.
The trip is full of uncertainty because she does not know where she will be sent after the three days of training or what the conditions will be like when she gets there. When asked about her excitement level for the trip, she said, "I'm excited and at the same time, nervous because of all of the unknown. For example, we never know where we are going to be sleeping at night. Sometimes we're at a four star hotel. But, during Katrina, we slept on the dirt floor in a horse arena because all of hotels were full with the people who had lost their homes."
Horsman is also very grateful that Kellogg Community College is supporting her when she leaves to perform service for her country. "I really appreciate that they recognize that this is a worthy cause, and are willing to let me go for this many weeks at once" she said. "I also realize that my coworkers are also sacrificing by the additional workload that they will have to take on so that I can go do this and I'm really grateful to them for their willingness to do that." At the same time, Horsman's dedication to the students at KCC comes through her comments about how long she'll be gone. "They like you to go for a minimum of three months, but that's getting too close to registration and I need to be back to help our students."
