Homeland Security

The federal Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act (SARA) became law in 1986. Title III of these SARA provisions is also known as the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA). SARA Title III requires states to:

Promote outreach for developing local emergency preparedness programs to respond to chemical releases.
Receive reports from the regulated community.
Organize, analyze and disseminate the resulting information on hazardous chemicals to local governments and the public.
Specifically, this has required the establishment of state emergency response commissions and local emergency planning committees.

The nationwide regulated community of manufacturers and non-manufacturers of hazardous chemicals must report concerning their emergency chemical releases; their Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS); their facility hazardous chemical inventories (Tier I and Tier II reports); and their toxic chemical releases to the air, land or water (Toxics Release Inventory).

Because of this activity, businesses have reassessed their chemical inventories and their manufacturing processes. In addition, more businesses are working cooperatively with local governments to plan for and try to prevent an accidental chemical release.

Businesses are also pursuing waste minimization and pollution prevention programs and realizing monetary savings.

You can find the current road conditions and status of any Indiana or Federal highway by going to this link: https://511in.org. From this link, you can enlarge the state map and click on various icons to find out the status of any Indiana highway and alternative routes.

Randolph County's current travel status can be found at the following link:http://www.in.gov/dhs/traveladvisory/. The county travel status is changed by the order of the Board of Commissioners, based upon the recommendation of status change by the Randolph County Sheriff, the Randolph County Highway Director, and the Randolph County Homeland Security and Emergency Management Director.

The status change is done with the entire county community in mind, even though conditions in one portion of the county may be different than another portion of the county. The safety of the public and the emergency services personnel are utmost in our mind. Please do your best to follow the travel status and cooperate with emergency service personnel.

Should a travel warning be issued by the county, essentially declaring a weather emergency, persons are directed not to travel. The travel is restricted to emergency personnel only. Additional restrictions can be declared. With this said please understand the following:

• The travel statuses are for unincorporated portions of the county (meaning rural county roadways). They do not and cannot be applied to state or federal highways.
• Cities and towns may choose to follow or ignore the travel status. The choice is up to the Mayor and Town Council President.
• If your place of employment chooses not to follow the travel warning and orders employees to work, then you should report to work. The ordinance does not have the authority to regulate commerce and those businesses that chose to stay open during severe weather.
• We work closely with the schools and notify the superintendents as travel statuses as are changed. However, the decision for the schools to remain open or closed falls solely on the superintendent.