Retired Lawrence firefighter leads area counties’ security efforts

Bill Brubaker spends a lot of time these days thinking about how bad things could get in the 23 counties of northeast Kansas.

He is working with those counties to make sure they are prepared to deal with anything from a natural disaster to a terrorist attack.

Brubaker, a retired Lawrence firefighter, last month took the job of Northeast Kansas Regional Coordinator for the Department of Homeland Security.

“It involves the planning process for the different counties and looking at the vulnerabilities and the risks,” Brubaker, a Lawrence resident, said of his new job in Topeka. Douglas County is included in his territory, which extends from Coffey County north to the state line and from Geary County east, excluding the Kansas City metropolitan area, which includes Leavenworth County.

Brubaker coordinates programs and information that come down from Homeland Security in Washington, D.C. He works under the Kansas Emergency Management Office, which is overseen by the Kansas Adjutant General’s Office.

Brubaker

Brubaker’s duties include writing, conducting and evaluating emergency exercises.

“It could be anything from a hospital exercise to a full-scale county exercise,” he said. “We’re even going to do a statewide exercise sometime this year.”

Brubaker is still learning the details of how certain emergencies would be handled in conjunction with other state agencies and local governments, but Homeland Security would be involved in incidents such as a problem at the Wolf Creek nuclear plant near Burlington, said Joy Moser, spokeswoman for the Kansas Adjutant General’s Office.

There are a variety of incidents that could occur at Wolf Creek and a lot of factors that would determine what action is taken, Moser said. The state conducts emergency exercises on a Wolf Creek incident every 17 to 18 months, she said. The last one was completed in November.

“There are a whole multitude of possibilities, and we train for that,” she said. “The final report isn’t in, but we think we did pretty well.”

Brubaker spent 32 years with Lawrence-Douglas County Fire & Medical, including heading the hazardous materials unit. He also worked a couple of years for Douglas County Emergency Management and was the first director of the Civilian Emergency Response Team program.