PARIS — Director for Oxford County’s Emergency Management Agency, Allyson Hill, has been recognized by her peers with not one but two awards during the Annual Emergency Preparedness Conference in Augusta last month.

One is from the Maine Association of Emergency Managers. The plaque reads “in recognition for putting service ahead of self in the field of emergency management in Maine, for bringing new ideas, strategies and approaches to her position, and for creating positive impacts for her community.”

The second award is for Outstanding Emergency Manager of the Year, from the Maine County Emergency Management Directors Council.

Armed with an infectious laugh, Hill is also modest about her on-the-job achievements.

“I did not expect it,” she says. “I’ve been doing this for 19 years, and I’m just doing my job.”

During a conversation with the Advertiser Democrat, she gave a shout out to her Rumford-based colleagues who earned their own accolades at the conference, an event begun as a competition between hazmat teams and later expanded to include more emergency response preparedness.

“As a side note, this is the second year that our regional Response Team 10 from Rumford has won that competition,” Hill laughed, determined to share her peers’ accomplishments.

Response Team 10 operates out of the ND paper mill in Rumford. Sappi also has a team, and a police-based team  out of Androscoggin County is called the COBRA Team.

“These are technical level hazardous materials responders, as opposed to fire departments, which have many operational level hazmat responders. We call the technicians in when there is an active leak of something really, really bad.

“They do really fun competitions. They have to wear these Level A full hazmat suits, really cumbersome. They have have air packs in them and just a little see-through screen. They’ll play golf, do regular functional tasks.”

Hill has worked for Oxford County’s team for the last 19 years, coming from the renewable energy engineering and finance fields. She went to work at the agency as its office manager shortly after returning to live in Maine.

A large part of her role starting out was to manage and track federal grants funding emergency management projects as well as for homeland security and community-based hazard mitigation.

Hill was elevated to be the agency’s acting director in 2011, and handled both jobs for 12 years.

She was named permanent director in February of 2012 as the agency was reduced from five full-time employees to two.

“I just kept doing all the office manager stuff with all the director’s [responsibilities] added to it,” Hill said.

One of the other positions was also eliminated and Hill had to get creative to keep another, that of the county’s school planner, staffed through Homeland Security grants and emergency management performance grants until it was designated as a contractor position.

It is the role of a school planner to prepare surrounding school districts for the worst possible emergency, handling plans for “the words nobody likes to hear,” Hill said. “Like active shooter, violent intruder. Those things.”

Oxford County EMA supports school preparedness by providing multi-day ALICE (Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter and Evacuate) training in the event of a crisis.

“We basically give them tools besides locking down,” Hill said. “Instead of just sitting there hoping and waiting for help, they have plans for escape, if possible but also when to barricade” from an active shooter.

“It’s not easy or what people sign up for when they become educators,” she continued. “They don’t go to school to become a teacher who has to defend themselves against violence.”

While a significant part of EMA’s responsibilities involve making sure organizations have emergency protocols and first responders are equipped with the means to handle them, county staff are also the lifeline that coordinates responses as they need to happen.

Think of the people who keep communications rolling between Central Maine Power, other state agencies and municipalities during natural disasters. Like when flash floods took out roads and bridge that isolated western Maine communities during last December’s epic rainstorm or when April’s two feet of snow knocked out power to a half million utility customers in Maine and New Hampshire. Or when public roadways become dangerous and impassible due to damaged trees and power lines.

“It’s mostly about public safety and life safety and making sure the roads are cleared,” Hill said. “If someone does call 911, the resources are able to get to them to provide aid.

“I’ve seen the drone footage of Rumford and Mexico last year. I don’t think people fully understand when an entire town is underwater. What happened to their businesses, their community. It was like Hurricane Katrina when piles of people’s stuff were outside their houses because they were destroyed. It’s literally their life – and we had that in Rumford and Mexico.”

She says natural disasters will continue to disrupt daily life in the years to come. Last year between January and August there were 78 flash flood and flood alerts issued for the county by the National Weather Service. The previous record of 43 for an entire year was recorded back in 1998.

“Over the entire year in Oxford County, there were 153 weather alerts, and 103 of them were for flash flooding. That is once every three days,” she said. “Between March and August Oxford County recorded the wettest months individually and collectively for that period on record.

“What you feel like happened last year? It did. It was bad and don’t let anyone tell you it wasn’t.”

Looking forward, Hill said Mainers need to expect more bad weather years.

“We’re not used to flash floods – we don’t have flash floods. We’re used to spring floods when the rivers come up, and the usual places are affected. But what’s happening now is different. The weather patterns, the amount of rain we receive.”

As El Niño gives way to the effects of La Niña this year, Hill’s natural disaster crystal ball reads that Maine, even inland, is likely to experience more hurricanes occurring in the Atlantic ocean.

“We need different levels of caution,” she said. “Water is so powerful. I’ve seen entire, fully-leafed trees ripped up by river water and carried downstream in Oxford County and that is not regular.

“Hurricane Irene? It had been predicted to go through Maine. And if it had, it would not have been any different than what happened to Vermont.”

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